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The Human Nature 
of The Saints 






BY 

GEORGE HODGES 

Dean of the Episcopal Theological School 
Cambridge, Mass. 



NEW YORK 
THOMAS WHITTAKER 

2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSE 



LIBRARY cf CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

NOV 4 1904 

Cqpyrignt tniry 




V\4> 



Copyright, 1904, 
By THOMAS WHITTAKER 



Contents 



The Tombs of the Prophets . 

Saints and Strikers 

The Wisdom of the Wise Men 

The Progress of Andrew 

The Damnation of Dives 

The Reality of the Temptation 

The Unbelief of Thomas 

Blind Bartim^us 

The Mission of Philip 

The Communion of Saints 

The Religion of a Christian . 

The Rich Young Man 

The Wind and the Fire . 

At the Table of Zaccheus 

The Lord's Brother 

One From Ten 

Saints in Summer 

The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved 

The Satisfaction of Religion . 



I 

lO 
25 

37 

49 
6i 

79 
89 

102 

1 12 

125 

139 
1 54 
167 
179 

192 
204 
217 
230 



THE TOMBS OF THE PEOPHETS. 

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because 
ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepul- 
chres of the righteous. — Matt, 23 : 29. 

Our Lord is making no objection either to 
architecture or to enthusiasm. His words are 
not to be taken as a criticism of national 
monuments or even of cemeteries. They do 
not interfere with Memorial Day or with the 
Fourth of July or with the festivals of the 
saints. 

What our Lord does object to is the hy- 
pocrisy which makes so much of the prophets 
after they are dead, while it abuses the prophets 
who are yet alive. Carved stones for Elijah 
and Elisha, cobble stones for John and Peter ; 
that is what He means. " Woe unto you, 
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! because ye 
build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish 
the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, If 
we had been in the days of our fathers we 
would not have been partakers with them in 
the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be 
witnesses unto yourselves that ye are the 
children of them which killed the prophets. 

1 



2 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

And ye yourselves are filling up the measure 
of your fathers." 

The name of this old sin, in the milder form 
which it assumes to-day, is detraction. It is 
now aimed not against the life of the prophet, 
but against his reputation. The great man 
comes, and divides society into parties. To 
those who are not of his party, he can do nothing 
good. They make it their business to obstruct 
and revile him. Every word and deed is in- 
terpreted in the interests of partisan prejudice. 
Even his intentions are accounted base. 

"I am often amazed," said Mr. Gladstone, 
" at the construction put upon my acts and 
words ; but experience has shown me that they 
are commonly put under the microscope, and 
then found to contain all manner of horrors, 
like the animalcules in Thames w^ater." Some- 
body said to that great statesman at the end 
of his life, " You have so lived and wrought 
that you have kept the soul alive in England." 
His noblest contemporary, after he was dead, 
called him "a great Christian." His biog- 
grapher closes the story of his life with the 
words, " He upheld a golden lamp." But you 
know very well how he was persistently ma- 
ligned. You know that there were excellent 
people who could not say anything too bad 
about him. 



THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 3 

For the sin of detraction is eminently the 
offense of excellent people. Our Lord was 
addressing the most respectable citizens of Je- 
rusalem. Men and women who are apparently 
possessed of all the virtues will be so affected 
by the person of a prophet who prophesies on 
the other side that they will lie and steal. 
They will eagerly believe lies and repeat them 
to steal his good name. Some of them would 
like to kill him. 

I hope that we may have the grace, so far 
as we are concerned, to contribute to a public 
opinion which is against the detraction of 
public men. A community which encourages 
school children to honor the memory of Wash- 
ington and Lincoln, while at the same time it 
encourages politicians to defame the men who 
at this hour are serving the state, differs not at 
all from that against which the Lord spoke 
in the text. 

What I have in mind, however, more par- 
ticularly, is the detraction of the religious, 
the offense of the slanderous saints. Here, for 
example, is a passage from the life of Dr. 
Pusey : " During this time he was an object of 
wide-spread, deep, fierce suspicion. Some 
heads of houses would not speak to him when 
they met him in the street. The post brought 
him, day by day, various forms of insults by 



4: THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

letters, signed and anonymous. . . . He 
once said that that sort of thing took more 
out of him in half an hour than ten hours' 
work ; and his frequent collapses of health 
were probably rather caused by heart than by 
head strain." The people who wrote to Dr. 
Pusej'' were very pious persons. They said 
their prayers and read their Bibles, and then 
wrote their letters. 

So was the Eev. Augustus Toplady a pious 
person. Tou remember that he was the author 
of the hymn " Kock of Ages." He declared 
that John Wesley was a liar. He was quite 
certain of it, and he announced the fact in 
public with a loud voice — yes, with a joyful 
voice, — for he was at that moment engaged in 
a controversy with Wesley, and this assertion 
of Wesley's mendacity was for the purpose of 
making a point. It was a good point, as any- 
body can see. Mr. Toplady may have after- 
wards repented : I know not. It is unlikely : 
the controversialist rarely repents. Even if he 
does repent, the thing is done, the good man 
has been hit over the heart and it hurts, and 
apologetic words afterwards are a poor oint- 
ment. 

The author of "Kock of Ages" was an 
abusive saint. Like Dr. Pusey's correspond- 
ents, he was filled with bitterness and wrath 



THE TOMBS OF THE PKOPHETS. 5 

and anger and clamor and evil-speaking, — and 
with religion. It is a strange, unholy com- 
bination ; but it exists. 

Enoch walks with God, as the old record 
says. There he goes along the country road, 
hand in hand with God. And there, as they 
two walk together, Noah and Methuselah and 
Shem and Ham and Japhet hoot after them, 
and throw stones. It happens every day. 

It comes, I suppose, from the great zeal 
which men have for the truth, or for their con- 
ception of the truth. They are afraid that 
something disastrous will be done to the truth. 
They do not perceive that Enoch is walking 
with God. All that they see is that he is 
going in another direction than that to- 
wards which their own feet are pointed, and 
they have a queer idea that if they shout at 
him and stone him, he will turn about and 
walk with them ! Why should he ? It is 
one of the most flagrant and foolish of errors. 

Perhaps the heart of the matter is this : that 
the good, who know by their own experience 
how hard it is to stay good, find it easy to be- 
lieve evil of the good. Anyhow, they do it. 
They believe evil and speak it. And it is a 
sin, like stealing. It is one of the sins of the 
saints. 

It is true that an argument in favor of 



6 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

strong language may be drawn from this very 
discourse of our Lord out of which the text 
is taken. " Ye serpents," He says, " ye gener- 
ation of vipers, how can ye escape the dam- 
nation of hell ? " It is not absolutely certain, 
however, that He used those words. St. Luke 
reports this same address to the scribes and 
Pharisees, and leaves them out. He agrees 
with St. Matthew as to the sentences which 
precede and as to the sentences which follow. 
This particular hard sentence is omitted. 

But, anyway, even if He did assail good 
churchmen with such bitter epithets, the ques- 
tion still remains as to the tone of voice in 
which He spoke. Did He speak in anger or in 
sorrow ? Were His hands clenched, or were 
they held out in warning, in deprecation, in 
entreaty ? Was He pushing the pharisees over 
the brink into the bottomless pit, or was He 
crying out in sharp distress to tell them the 
peril in Tvhich they stood? That, you see, 
will make a difference in our understanding of 
them. They must be interpreted by the tones 
of His voice. And these we hear in the words 
which follow, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou 
that killest the prophets and stonest them that 
are sent unto thee, how often would I have 
gathered thy children together as a hen 
gathereth her chickens under her wings, and 



THE TOMBS OF THE PROPHETS. 7 

ye would not." This is no language of contro- 
versy, no hurling back and forth of the hard 
names that hurt. It is in the midst of the 
holy week, and He who speaks stands already 
in the shadow of death, in the neighborhood 
of the cross. Let nobody come here for stones 
with which to bruise his neighbor's head. 

It is true that an argument in favor of 
detraction may be found in the necessity to 
defend the truth. Somebody will say. What 
shall we do ? Shall we stand quietly by and let 
error speak without contradiction ? Shall we 
give the heretic and the schismatic the whole 
field ? Shall we see church and state, town 
and parish, going to the bad and let them go ? 
Shall we surrender ? 

No, friend, there shall be no surrender. But 
let us choose the most effective weapon. Let 
us contend for truth in the manner which shall 
best maintain the truth. When Jesus came, 
bringing the beatitudes with Him, preaching 
the gospel of gentleness and courtesy and 
brotherly love. He amazed His hearers. In- 
deed, are we not to infer from the account of 
the temptation that it seemed for a moment to 
Himself that the conquest of the world could 
hardly be attained by a campaign of peace. 
Else what is meant by that conversation with 
the devil on the top of the mountain. " All 



8 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

these will I give Thee," says the devil, " but you 
must take possession through my help." To 
which the Lord answers, " Get thee behind 
Me, Satan." 

All this endeavor to protect and advance the 
truth and the right by violence, by compulsion, 
by fierce controversy, by detraction, by writing 
letters which make the hearts of good men 
ache, by calling the saints liars, has always 
and everywhere brought about the defeat of 
the cause for which the contestant has thus 
contended. The Christian man who has fought 
with the devil's weapons has but cut his own 
hands. 

Persecution has always turned against the 
persecutor. Truth makes its way by affirma- 
tion, not by negation. It is accepted by those 
who are fairly convinced by an appeal to 
reason. And that appeal is assisted by sym- 
pathy, by courtesy, by patience, by honest 
argument, and by nothing else. Everything 
else hinders, — detraction most of all. 

Let us, then, build high the tombs of the old 
prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the 
righteous men of the past time. But let us 
remember that our own age has its own 
prophets, and that the righteous are still with 
us. The best defense against detraction is to 
cultivate the opposite virtue of appreciation. 



THE TOMBS OF THE PKOPHETS. 9 

The best way to get out of a bad habit of 
blame is to get as quickly as we can into a 
good habit of praise. Let us expect goodness, 
and a high purpose, and a pure motive, and 
wisdom, and fine achievement; and be quick 
to discover them in public and in private. Let 
us deny, so far as lies in us, the ingratitude of 
republics. When we differ with our neighbors, 
as diJffer we must in a world where tempera- 
ments are so various and truth so vast, let us 
do it with a good spirit, without jealousy, and 
without suspicion. Let us see to it that no 
partisanship, whether political .or ecclesiastical, 
shall make us blind to our neighbor's virtues, 
or dull to his achievements. If the book pleases 
us, let us write to the author and say so. If 
the thing that is said or done commends itself 
to us, let us not keep our appreciation secret. 
Let us praise our contemporaries without re- 
luctance, and not wait till they are dead and 
out of hearing. So shall we behave ourselves 
as Christian citizens and churchmen, and 
steadily encourage and increase the goodness 
of the world. 



SAINTS AND STRIKEKS. 

Can two walk together, except they be agreed ? — Amo& 
3:3. 

That depends upon their character, and 
upon the nature of their disagreement. 

If they are nervous or narrow-minded per- 
sons they cannot walk together with any satis- 
faction, unless they walk in silence. The least 
difference of opinion irritates them, because 
they are irritable. A man who has good eyes 
goes about in the blaze of the sun, and enjoys 
it; but the sun hurts the man who has sore 
eyes. The fault is in the eyes. If the red- 
eyed man has good sense he keeps out of the 
sun ; and if nervous and narrow-minded per- 
sons are wise enough to understand themselves 
they keep out of discussion. They are as unfit 
for it as a lame man is to run a race. 

The like is true of all persons who are 
suspicious of the soundness of their own argu- 
ments, or of the excellence of their own cause. 
They are afraid ; and because of their fear 
they lose control of themselves. He who is 
sure that he is in possession of the truth ; he 
who knows that he is right, and that being 

10 



SAINTS AISTD STRIKERS. 11 

right all the forces of the universe are on his 
side; can afford to be serene and patient. 
When his adversary denies that two and two 
make four, he does not get excited. He does 
not tremble for the foundations of the world 
of mathematics. He remembers the philos- 
opher who noticed that the burning of a little 
straw would for the moment hide the shining 
of the everlasting stars, but that the smoke 
always drifted away without doing the stars 
the smallest damage. It is the man who is 
maintaining that two and two make seven who 
gets excited ; and his excitement is much in- 
creased if he suspects in the secrecy of his in- 
most soul that the true answer is not seven but 
either five or four. He cannot walk in peace 
with his neighbor, unless he avoids the subject 
of addition. 

The nature of the disagreement enters also 
into the question. If the difference between 
the two is slight, or relates chiefly to details, 
then they will walk together only the more 
pleasantl}^ by reason of it. Nothing is so ob- 
structive to all rational and enjoyable conver- 
sation as complete agreement. They who 
agree entirely have nothing to say. The life 
of society is in its interesting divergencies of 
opinion. The good Lord has fortunately made 
even honest people very different. There are 



12 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

as many minds as there are faces. Some peo- 
ple in every company are conservative, others 
are progressive. Nobody is completely right. 
So we go on arguing, walking together and 
debating as we walk, to our constant profit. 

Even when the disagreement is deep and 
serious, and one is right according to all prin- 
ciples of goodness, while the other is wrong 
according to all principles of evil, — even here 
we may not lightly permit the two to walk 
apart. If the wise walk only with the wise, 
what will become of the fools ? If the good 
associate only with the good, how will it fare 
with the bad ? "Will they not grow worse ? 
If they who have the truth and the right for- 
sake their neighbors who are in error, how 
shall mistakes be corrected? Is it not the 
business of those who see clearly to take their 
blind brothers by the elbow, and by walking 
with them keep them in the path ? All dis- 
agreements are magnified and perpetuated by 
lack of acquaintance among those who hold 
different opinions. The personal element 
enters into all our social problems, and counts 
greatly. Prejudice keeps us from understand- 
ing one another, and prejudice grows rank in 
the soil of ignorance. Somebody said, '• I hate 
that man." To which somebody else rejoined, 
" How can you hate him when you don't know 



SAINTS AND STEIKERS. 13 

him ? " And the answer was, " How could I 
hate him if I did know him ? " 

So we come back to the question, " Can two 
walk together, except they be agreed ? " And 
we say, " Yes, if they are in good health and 
spirits, and are persons of some sense ; espe- 
cially if their disagreements are for the most 
part on the surface, while they are in substan- 
tial agreement underneath. Even they who 
are very seriously out of accord may well be 
advised to take a walk together, in hope of 
better understanding." 

I have in mind the relation between the 
churches and the trade-unions. There is much 
natural misunderstanding on both sides. 
There are obvious disagreements. The 
churches and the unions speak in quite diJBfer- 
ent dialects of the English language, and it is 
not easy for anybody to interpret the one to 
the other fairly. At the same time there are 
fundamental agreements. In a true sense we 
all mean the same thing. We are all open, as 
I hope to show, to the same criticisms. "We 
are learning the same lessons. "We are all 
alike in being sometimes right and sometimes 
wrong. The history of the unions is singu- 
larly near to the history of the churches. To 
many a man the union is the same thing as the 
church. The union is his church. The labor 



14 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

movement is his religion ; it is his idea of the 
progress of the kingdom of God. The two 
associations have many of the same virtues and 
many of the same defects. It will appear, I 
think, as we reflect upon the matter, that we 
are curiously in accord in regard to our blun- 
ders. The only errors of the union concerning 
which I have any qualification to speak are 
those which I am able to understand because 
they are equally the errors of the church. 
For better and for worse, the church and the 
union stand together. 

The first agreement of the church with the 
union is in the fact of variety. 

People sometimes speak of the union as if 
that name stood for a single type of the or- 
ganization of labor ; but the truth is that the 
unions are as different as the churches. Some 
are large, and some are small ; some are old, 
and some are young ; some are orthodox, and 
some are conservative. There are unions 
which are disposed to go into politics ; while 
there are others which oppose such an associ- 
ation with all their might. So it is in regard 
to socialism : so in regard to industrial peace 
and war. There are unions which have a 
strike every few weeks ; there are other unions 
which have not had a strike for forty years. 
Anybody who begins to talk about the church 



SAINTS AND STEIKERS. 15 

may properly be interrupted after the first 
sentence and asked, " What church do you 
mean ? are you discussing the Catholics or the 
Congregationalists ? do you refer to the Pres- 
byterians or to the Unitarians ? are you criti- 
cising the Methodists or the Mennonites?" 
Plainly, there are differences. So there are 
among the unions. 

The church and the union are alike in the 
reasonable demand to be judged by their best 
rather than by their worst, by their saints 
rather than by their sinners, by their ideals 
rather than by their blunders. They ought to 
be estimated by their official statements, not 
by the foolish speeches which were made in 
the debate. They are represented by their 
representative men, not by their heretics or 
their schismatics : by Bishop Lawrence and 
Bishop Potter, by Mr. Gompers and Mr. 
Mitchell. There are all sorts of churches and 
unions, but the only fair basis of praise or 
blame of the church movement or of the union 
movement is that which rests upon such 
churches and unions as are well established 
after long experience. 

The second agreement of the church with 
the union is in the fact of unity : along with 
all this variety of character goes a unity of 
purpose. 



16 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

This purpose is held in common by all good 
unions and by all good churches. It is the 
purpose to benefit the community. It is ex- 
pressed in the phrase of our common Master 
when He said that He came not to be minis- 
tered unto but to minister. That is the ideal 
of us all. 

It is true that the churches are sometimes 
criticised for caring less for earth than they do 
for paradise. It is said that their energies are 
mainly directed towards the life to come, and 
that they are altogether too contented with 
bad conditions in the life which now is. They 
want to go to heaven : whereas the right de- 
sire is to bring heaven down. 

It is true that the unions are sometimes 
criticised for an opposite defect. It is said 
that the life of the spirit has no meaning for 
them. That what they are exclusively con- 
cerned about is present and material prosper- 
ity. They want more wages and less hours, 
and better houses and a fairer share of com- 
fort. 

That is, the churches act as if man had no 
body, while the unions act as if he had no 
soul. The churches treat him as if he were 
an angel ; the unions treat him as if he were 
an animal. It is hard to put a right propor- 
tion of interest on all sides of life at the same 



SAINTS AKD STEIKERS. 17 

time. It is not to be wondered at if the 
church on the one side and the union on the 
other have omitted matters of importance. 
We have not done so with intention. We are 
all intent alike on the highest welfare of the 
whole man. But the physician has his proper 
work in dealing with the flesh, and the priest 
in dealing with the spirit. The union and the 
church stand in a like relation. A man ought 
to belong to a union in order that he may lift 
the level of common life for himself and for 
his fellows. Generally speaking, that cannot 
be done in any other way. The union is es- 
sential to the material welfare of the hand 
worker. The same man ought also to belong 
to a church in order that he may develop him- 
self on the spiritual side, keep alive in his soul 
the consciousness of the unseen and eternal, and 
be helped to meet his daily temptations and to 
do his daily duty. The church and the union, 
like the priest and the physician, will each do 
better service by coming to a better under- 
standing. 

To this criticism which the church and the 
union are in the habit of making, one against 
the other, is to be added another which is 
often made by outside persons against them 
both. When we maintain that our supreme 
purpose is to set forward the welfare of the 



18 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

community, they reply with some bitterness 
that in very truth neither of us, neither church 
nor union, cares for anything except our own 
advantage. What we really want, they say, is 
power and money, and our own good. 

That is at the heart of the present opposi- 
tion of the French government to the monas- 
teries and the church schools. These religious 
folk, they cry, do not care for France : all that 
they care for is the increase of their order. 
If they Avere believed to be the servants of the 
people, honestly devoting themselves in the 
name of Jesus to the general good, asking for 
no return, they would be blessed rather than 
cursed by all their neighbors. 

The same feeling is at the heart of the pres- 
ent wide-spread hatred of the trade-union. 
People look upon it as a secret society, intent 
on its own selfish purposes, and wholly regard- 
less of the public. They find it practically 
impossible to distinguish between the monop- 
oly of labor and the monopoly of capital. 
Anyway, it is a monopoly : that is, it is an en- 
deavor of a few to get the better of the many. 

These, of course, are misjudgments. They 
may indeed be based on facts ; there are sel- 
fish churches and there are selfish unions which 
deserve all the hard things that can be said 
against them. But we know, who view these 



SAINTS AND STRIKEES. 19 

things from within, that the church and the 
union alike are actuated by a great, unselfish 
purpose to do good. We are all working for the 
Kingdom of God, for the advancement of all 
that makes for common justice, and righteous- 
ness and peace and joy. We are making many 
blunders, and some of them are bad ones ; we 
are beset not only by the diflBculties of the 
situation but by the weaknesses of our own 
human nature ; we are abundantly open to 
criticism. We know that. But through all 
that we do, even through our folly, runs one 
high purpose, never wholly lost to sight, — the 
purpose to make it possible for every human 
being to live the life which is proper to a child 
of God. 

Among many agreements between the 
church and the union I find a third in the 
fact that they are learning the same lesson. 

The problem is how best to advance our 
common purpose. We all know by experience 
that this is a most diflBcult undertaking. The 
writer of the Psalms showed a good w^orking 
knowledge of human nature when he spoke of 
the man who " hated to be reformed." Most 
men hate to be reformed. Churches and 
unions, like all other associations for improving 
the community, find this out. But men who 
ought to be reformed must somehow be 



20 



THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 



brought under the influences of reformation. 
The question is. How to do it. 

The churches, being a good deal older than 
the unions, were the first to undertake this 
hard matter : and they have certain things to 
say about it as the result of experience. The 
chief conclusion of that experience is this : 
that no good cause is helped by compulsion. 
Men are brought to think aright and to act 
aright by being convinced, not by being com- 
pelled. 

The question of the attitude of the union 
towards the non-union man is in all material 
respects like the question of the attitude of 
the church towards the heretic and the schis- 
matic. The church, like the union, is certain 
of the righteousness of its own cause. It be- 
lieves that the welfare of the whole commun- 
ity is involved in the Christian organization. 
And here it greatly exceeds the union : for 
while the union-man claims that his society is 
necessary to the salvation of the laboring class 
in this present life, the churchman asserts that 
his society is essential to the salvation of all 
people of all classes both in this world and the 
next. No unionist, in the very extremity of 
his enthusiasm, has ever said so much as that. 

But the heretic and the schismatic weaken 
the church. They attack and endanger the 



SAINTS AND STRIKERS. 21 

glorious cause. They bring into peril the im- 
mortal souls of men. They keep back the ful- 
filment of the will of God. I am trying to show 
the union-man that the churchman is able to 
understand how he feels because he occupies 
the same position. The union has never in its 
moments of deepest anger spoken of the scab as 
the church has spoken of the heretic. Did 
you ever read the major excommunication? 
The union has never punished the man who is 
accused of stealing his neighbor's job as the 
church has punished the man who is accused 
of destroying his neighbor's soul. Our custom 
was to burn such persons over a slow fire. 

We have been through it all, from the least 
to the greatest and the worst. We have made 
use of the strike and the boycott to an extent 
which fills whole chapters of history. We 
have not hesitated, when we had a point to 
gain or an enemy to hurt, to lay a whole 
nation under an interdict, whereby the people 
were deprived of the necessaries of spiritual 
life. When Mary was the Queen of England, 
you remember what we did. We got a law 
passed that nobody except an official of our 
union should baptize, or confirm, or admin- 
ister the sacrament of the altar, or marry, or 
even bury in all the realm under pain first 
of fine, then of imprisonment, and then of 



22 THE HUMAN NATUKE OF THE SAINTS. 

death. Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer were 
burned at the stake as non-union bishops. You 
know what we did as the Amalgamated As- 
sociation of Congregationalists and Presby- 
terians. We cut off the head of a non-union 
king. You remember how we behaved in 
Massachusetts in the matter of the open 
state. There is no difference in prin- 
ciple between the open state and the 
open shop. The question was. Shall we 
permit non-unionists to share with us in the 
government ? And we said No. Not a man 
shall hold a public office or even cast a vote 
unless he is a member of the church. And we 
whipped the non-union Baptists and the non- 
union Quakers, beating them with scourges 
through the streets of our chief cities. 

It never did us any good. It never brought 
our cause to victory. It lead straight to de- 
feat always. We have tried the policy of 
compulsion to the uttermost, and we assert 
as the total result of our experience that it is 
a policy of tragic blunder. We tried it in all 
honesty of purpose, for the general good, with 
a clear conscience, in the sight of God. It 
seemed to us, as it seems to-day to many a 
union, that it was the only thing to do. How 
can a man stand by in silence while a strike- 
breaker steals the bread out of the hands of 



SAINTS AND STRIKERS. 23 

his hungry children ? How can a man be pas- 
sive and peaceable while a heretic is poisoning 
the wells of truth ? We did just what the 
union does : we struck the heretic, intending 
thereby to do right and serve heaven. But 
we have to say that every such blow damaged 
our own cause, and helped heresy. 

For human nature works that way. Insti- 
tutionalism and individualism are alike or- 
dained of God. He has implanted in our souls 
the instinct of association and the instinct of 
independence. They are both sacred. Both 
must be maintained. And in this nation both 
Avill be maintained, in spite of all possible pro- 
tests of the unions or the churches. Men must 
be permitted to enter with all freedom into 
any kind of legal combination, whether we 
like it or not. And men must be permitted, 
if they choose, to stay outside all combinations 
unmolested. The corporation which opposes 
the organization of its men, and the union 
which refuses to work at the same trade with 
the independent workman, have each of them 
much to say for themselves, but after all is 
said the fact remains that they are contending 
against universal and eternal laws of human 
nature. And it is like contending against the 
law of gravitation. 

I will not say that even the church has 



24 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

learned this lesson to the last page, and got it 
all by heart. It is one of the most difficult of 
all the lessons of the Book of Life. God for- 
bid, then, that the church should criticise the 
union for its treatment of the non-unionist, in 
any other than a sympathetic spirit. It is 
both bad and vain, and we are bound to say 
so. But we found that out by doing the same 
thing, and being punished for it. The union 
is following in the steps of the church. It is 
learning the same lesson, it is going through 
the same experience, it will reach the same 
conclusion. 

Here we stand, the union and the church, 
servants of the people. We agree in the va- 
riety of our character, in the unity of our high 
purpose, and in the slow-learned fact that that 
purpose is defeated by compulsion, and gained 
only by reason and sympathy and patience. 
God bless our common purpose. God help us 
out of misunderstanding and suspicion into 
such cooperation as shall bring us to its best 
attainment. 



THE WISDOM OF THE WISE MEN. 

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the 
days of Herod the King, behold there came wise men from 
the East to Jerusalem. — 3Iatt. 2 : 1. 

The wise men showed their wisdom by the 
use which they made of their eyes, their feet 
and their hands. 

With their eyes, they saw the star. But 
that was no great thing. Anybody with eyes, 
who looks up into the clear sky at night, can 
see a star. All the neighbors of the wise men 
saw the star, and so did the sheep in the fields 
and the dogs in the streets. The difference 
between the wise men and their neighbors 
was that while the neighbors saw the star, the 
wise men recognized it. 

'*The star was so beautiful, large and clear, 

That aU the other stars of the sky- 
Became a white mist in the atmosphere, 
And by this they knew that the coming was near 

Of the Prince foretold in the prophecy.'^ 

But the white mist appeared only to the 
wise men, and was caused by the intentness 
with which they looked at the new star. They 

25 



26 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

looked at it with all their eyes, till every other 
sight became but a dim blur in comparison. 
Other people of that town were a good deal 
interested. They watched the sky night after 
night, and pointed out the new star to their 
children. But the nights were cold, and it 
was rather hard to distinguish the new star 
from the crowd of old ones, and presently they 
ceased to look. They had seen only that 
which was visible, — and not all of that, — the 
wise men had seen the invisible. That was the 
difference. 

Was there really a new star? Into the 
mathematical domains over which the astron- 
omers keep guard did there actually enter a 
new light, significant of an event on earth, 
summoning those who saw and understood to 
the cradle side of a new King ? The stars 
used to be consulted for information. There 
they shone like jewels in the ancient ceiling of 
the sky, kindled by God's hand, moved here 
and there in mystic combinations by God's 
will, no doubt spelling out great truths, the 
letters of divine messages, if we did but know 
enough to read them. So men thought, as we 
think no longer. You can still have your 
horoscope read, and learn what is written 
about you in the firmament of heaven. But 
the customers of the astrologers are no longer 



THE WISDOM OF THE WISE MEN. 27 

persons of good health and sense. All that 
has gone by. The stars enter no longer into 
human life. Was there a star ? Would they 
have seen it at the college observatory ? And 
if there was, as Kepler maintained, did it have 
a meaning ? 

We cannot help asking these questions. They 
belong to the temperament of the time, which 
inevitably affects us all. We cannot read the 
story with the quiet acceptance which was 
given to it by our fathers. The answers, how- 
ever, whether they fall on one side or on the 
other, are not of great importance. The visit 
of the wise men has no place in Christian doc- 
trine. Nothing depends upon it. Only let us 
take care lest we treat the story as the wise 
men's neighbors treated the star, who looked 
at it, and were puzzled by it, and saw no 
meaning in it, and then went on and thought 
no more about it. Whether or not it has the 
truth of statistics, it has the higher truth of 
poetry. Whether or not it can be verified in 
the realm of geography, it is blessedly and 
eternally true in the realm of the spirit. The 
wise men saw the star. Watchers of the sky, 
and thus occupied about their ordinary busi- 
ness, God addressed them in their own lan- 
guage, met them on their own ground, spoke 
to them from the pages of their own books, 



28 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

even as He came afterwards in another form 
to men who were occupied with their nets. 
In the stars to the astronomer, in the boats and 
the nets to the fisherman, to each of us in the 
opportunities of our daily tasks, God comes. 
He still comes, and still speaks. The story of 
the wise men is verified in our own experience. 
Living as we do in an environment of mystery, 
in a world of which we understand but a very 
little, let us treat these beautiful stories of the 
beginnings of the Perfect Life with becoming 
humility. Especially let us see to it that no 
new learning be allowed to rob us of our ap- 
preciation of their ideal fitness, or to make us 
indifferent to their spiritual truth or to their 
divine message to our souls. 

The wise men saw the star, and because they 
were wise they knew what the star meant. 
They saw the invisible. • The secret of true 
sight is to see the invisible. To a dog, or a 
looking-glass, or a camera, a page of print is 
nothing but a page of print, so many inches 
this way and that of black lines on a white 
ground. To a wise man, it is a message, an 
instruction, even an inspiration. He looks 
upon it, and is thereafter different. The sight 
has brought a new thought into his mind, a 
new motive into his life. The dull man, look- 
ing over his shoulder, makes nothing of it. 



THE WISDOM OF THE WISE MEN. 29 

He sees only the visible : a wise man sees the 
invisible. 

Jesus went about dividing men into com- 
panies of the wise and of the unwise. The 
sight of His face was like the sight of the 
Epiphany star : everybody saw Him, a few 
recognized Him. If you had asked the few 
how they recognized Him, they could not have 
given any adequate answer. They were like 
the wise men who if they had been asked how 
they knew that the star had a meaning could 
not have answered in terms of astronomy. 
They knew it ; that was all there was about it. 

Eecognition belongs to the regions of 
mystery, and eludes all endeavor to define it. 
The man who comes out from the hearing of 
great music, with his face aflame like the up- 
turned faces of the Bethlehem shepherds, can= 
not explain his emotion. He cannot convince 
the doubter, or make his unappreciative neigh- 
bor appreciate. He has seen the star, and the 
star has brought him a message from the 
Eternal. If the star has brought no message 
for his neighbor, it must be that his neighbor 
does not understand star language. There is 
no grammar nor dictionary of that mystic 
speech. The knowledge of it comes by nature, 
or by the inspiration of God. It is significant 
that on the Damascus road Saul heard a voice, 



30 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

while his companions heard only a sound. It 
is another symbol of the difference between 
people, whereby one sees and hears while those 
who stand about are deaf and blind. 

Having thus seen the star, the wise men fol- 
lowed it. With their feet, they followed the 
star. This was the natural result of recogni- 
tion. He who has looked into the heart of a 
new truth, he who has found a new hero or a 
new saint, cannot be contented to sit still. He 
is impelled to action. He must do something. 
What shall we do ? cry the publicans and the 
soldiers, after John the Baptist's sermon. 
What shall we do? demand the hearers of 
the apostles on the day of Pentecost. Lord, 
what wilt Thou have me to do ? asks Saul in 
the moment of the heavenly vision. The wise 
men have this instinctive sense of service. 
Beholding the star, it seems to beckon to 
them ; it goes on across the sky ; and they fol- 
low. They must follow. All vital truth 
beckons to men, summons them, calls them out 
of quiet and content to follow it. Because it 
is vital truth it has to do with life, and affects 
life, making it different. 

Sometimes the call of truth is to go on to 
the discovery of more truth. The man is 
given a glimpse which fills him with desire for 
clearer and nearer sight. He sees the star, but 



THE WISDOM OF THE WISE MEN. 31 

that does not satisfy him : he would seek the 
source of the star. The star shines not for its 
own sake but as an evidence of another light 
which the lover of light must find. The wise 
men were brethren of the honorable fraternity 
of scholars. The news of the coming of Christ 
which had been brought to a maiden in her 
chamber, to a priest before the altar, and to 
shepherds tending their flocks, comes now to 
men of reflection and study. And the imme- 
diate result of it in their case is to make them 
study harder. Out they go upon a journey of 
investigation. To the revelation which God 
had made in the sky they would add another 
revelation which they trusted God would 
make within reach of their journeying feet 
and of their generous hands. Thus the Epiph- 
any is the Christian festival of devout scholars, 
and its meaning is that God is pleased to lead 
the scholar from truth to truth, from the visi- 
ble to the invisible, from the less to the 
greater, from the imperfect knowledge of to- 
day to the clearer knowledge of to-morrow, 
from a light in the night sky to the light that 
never was on land or sea. 

It has been helpfully noticed that the direc- 
tion of the wise men's journey is a symbol of 
the progress of the student not only from truth 
to truth but from the abstract to the concrete. 



32 THE HUMAN KATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

That journey lay from east to west, and be- 
tween the east and the west there is, and 
always has been, a temperamental difference. 
The man of the east is a contemplative per- 
son ; the man of the west is an active person. 
The Oriental is naturally a dreamer ; much 
of the best energy of the east has gone into 
a philosophy so subtile and intricate that to 
the west it means nothing intelligible. The 
Occidental is naturally a worker ; the activities 
of the west have been chiefly exercised in the 
perfecting of machinery, and in the adminis- 
tration of the great affairs which machinery has 
made possible. Accordingly, one who journeys 
out of the east into the west passes from the 
region of ideals into the region of realities. 
Truth in the east is to be reflected upon, in the 
west it is to be applied. The east is the land 
of truth-for-truth's-sake ; the west is the land 
of truth-for-life's-sake. 

The westward journey of the Epiphany pil- 
grims finds its counterpart in the work of the 
student of history who applies his studies of 
the past to the interpretation of the present ; 
or of the student of science who increases his 
knowledge of the forces of nature that he may 
thereby increase the fund of human happiness, 
and make the world a pleasanter place to live 
in ; or of the student of literature whose de- 



THE WISDOM OF THE WISE MEN. 33 

sire is to make his treasures a universal pos- 
session, getting the humblest people to read the 
greatest books ; or of the student of philosophy 
who tries to make the thoughts of the supreme 
minds of the race available for solving the 
daily problems of the neighborhood : or of the 
student of theology who would make theol- 
ogy religious, so that the doctrines which on 
the one hand touch the heavens shall on the 
other hand touch the earth, and be the means 
of communication between the two, bringing 
heaven down and lifting men up to meet it, 
vitally and actually influencing and determin- 
ing life. 

The wisdom of the wise men, thus evidenced 
in the use that they made of their eyes and of 
their feet, was further shown in the employ- 
ment of their hands. They came with gifts, 
with gold and frankincense and myrrh. 

These offerings have long been associated 
with mystical meanings. 

" They laid their offerings at His feet : 
The gold was their tribute to a king, 

The frankincense, with its odor sweet, 

Was for the Priest, the Paraclete, 
The myrrh for the body's burying." 

Let US, indeed, read into the beautiful story 
all that we can of holy significance. He who 
lay in the cradle beneath the star at the end 



34 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

of the journey was worthy of all that they 
could bring. And, no doubt, they brought the 
best they could, the best fruits of their own 
land. After all is said, that is the heart of it : 
they brought their best and laid it at His feet, 
and themselves with it. 

Let us not blame them if they hesitate a 
moment at the top of the street. There they 
are with their camels and their finery, in the 
grand fashion of the splendid pictures, kings 
seeking a king. And this is no street for the 
dwelling of a king, — this back street set about 
on either side with the narrow and common- 
place houses of the poor. It means much 
that they went on and in. And when they 
were in, what did they see ? A peasant 
mother, the wife of a country carpenter, and 
her new-born child. Surely, it could not be 
for this that the star had shone in the east : it 
could not be for this that these sages had left 
their contemplations, that these persons of im= 
portance had journeyed over the long deserts. 
But the men who had recognized the star, 
recognized also the Lord of the star. Nothing 
else in the story so declares their wisdom as 
their kneeling down before this little speech- 
less child and offering their gifts. The star 
itself was not so wonderful as that. 

To see the truth beneath the surface, to per- 



THE WISDOK OF THE WISE MEN. 35 

ceive the large importance of small things, to 
discern the preciousness of the commonplace, 
to behold with wise reverence that which the 
man in the street passes by unheeding, to find 
God in the unpromising listeners of humanity 
— this is the work and the reward of the 
scholar. 

When one undertakes a common task, and so 
performs it as to bring out its divine meanings, 
finding its relation to both God and man, he 
partakes of the wisdom of the wise men. He 
whom they sought across the deserts can be 
found in anybody's oiflce, or study or sitting- 
room. 

When one enters into the common life, re- 
solved to live it in the spirit of Jesus, bringing 
into all its occupations, even the homeliest, the 
faithfulness, the thoroughness, the courtesy, 
the consideration, the gentleness, of ideal de- 
meanor, then to him is given, in answer to his 
gift, the blessing of the wise men, and under 
his own roof, though the street he lives in be 
as narrow as that in which the carpenter and 
his family were lodged, the Lord Christ shall 
appear daily. 

When one puts off his hat within the door 
of the church, — though it be the plainest of 
churches with the simplest of congregations, — 
w^hen he kneels there and calls upon Him who 



36 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

has promised His especial benediction in the as- 
sembly of the faithful, he bows beside the wise 
men of the Epiphany. Like them, he looks 
through that which is seen to that which is 
unseen, and perceives the presence of the 
Eternal. 

Into that presence, recognized and realized, 
the wise man brings his gifts, — the best that 
he has of strength, of facility, of experience, 
of material means, of influence among his 
fellows, — and in the silence, kneeling and 
praying, he holds out his hands, as the wise 
men did of old, and offers all, all that he has 
and is, to the supreme master of his soul. 



THE PEOGRESS OF ANDREW. 

One of the two which heard John speak and followed him, 
was Andrew, Simon Peter ^s brother. — John 1 : 43. 

Everybody knew Simon Peter. By the 
time this history was written he had become a 
man of renown. Wherever the Christian re- 
ligion went, the fame of Simon Peter went with 
it. He was not a scholar, nor an orator, still 
less was he a genius, like St. Paul : his letters 
show that. But he had the gift of leadership ; 
and he led, as the leader will. For the true 
leader depends not on any election or appoint- 
ment, he leads by temperament, by instinct, 
because he cannot help it. Thus Simon Peter, 
at the beginning of things led ; and the others 
followed. And everybody knew who he was. 

Andrew was Simon Peter's brother. It is 
plain that the historian felt that in presenting 
Andrew he was introducing an obscure person 
of whom he must give some account. So he 
proceeded, like a good reasoner, from the 
known to the unknown, and said that he was 
his brother's brother. 

This makes Andrew our example. For the 
world is mostly inhabited by obscure persons ; 

37 



38 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

congregations are largely composed of obscure 
persons. Andrew is like us. He is our brotiier, 
as well as Simon Peter's. Most of us, I sup- 
pose, would feel some constraint in the com- 
pany of Simon Peter. But Andrew we could 
ask to dinner without ceremony : and let the 
children come to the table. And that night, 
after he had gone, we would say. He is a saint, 
and yet he is a human being just like us. And 
we would make a great resolution to be like 
him. Andrew was a plain, human, ordinary'', 
approachable, and friendly saint. This was 
the man who heard John speak. 

He heard John speak, but not by chance. 
The words came with dramatic punctuality, 
just as the hour struck. All of the man's past 
experience culminated in that supreme moment, 
and his whole future was determined by it. 

There were other men that day in whose 
hearing the same words were spoken, but who 
went on, paying no heed. The sentence which 
changed Andrew's life made no difference in 
them, left no impression upon them. In a 
little while, they forgot it altogether ; and if 
that night they looked back over the day, 
remembering the various things which had 
happened to them, of one sort or another, good 
or bad, it is not likely that these words were 
counted in. Breakfast and dinner would ap- 



THE PEOGRESS OF AKDREW. 39 

pear as events of some importance, leaving 
marks in the memory, but the sermon which 
John the Baptist preached would be but a dim 
and blurred remembrance. He did say some- 
thing ; and he certainly did look very queer in 
that absurd skin of a camel. What did he say ? 
What did he say? And so, to sleep. But 
Andrew lay awake all night, saying the words 
over and over to himself, — Behold the Lamb of 
God, which taketh away the sin of the world ! 
Because the words meant to Andrew more 
than they meant to any of the careless crowd. 
Day by day he had been preparing to hear 
them. All his past life had led up to them. 
They were interpreted to him by his whole 
spiritual experience. 

For the difference between different people 
is not due altogether to the unequal distri- 
bution of opportunity. Everybody has his 
opportunity. Sometimes a man comes up out 
of the most unpromising conditions and puts 
to shame a w^hole multitude of his better born 
and better bred brethren, and casts suspicion 
on our fine theories of heredity and of en- 
vironment. He seemed to have no chance, 
and yet he became a man indeed, a hero and a 
benefactor of his fellow men ; while any num- 
ber of his neighbors, who seemed to have all 
things on their side and in their favor, failed 



40 THE HUMAN NATURE OP THE SAINTS. 

and did more harm than good. The difference 
is not made by much or by little opportunity, 
but by the recognition or the lack of recog- 
nition of it. It comes ; and one is blind and 
deaf, while by his side another hears and sees. 
And the recognition depends on past experi- 
ence, on the character which has been con- 
structed day by day. 

Thus there are books which have altogether 
changed men's lives. They read them, and the 
gates of a new world opened as they turned 
the pages. Other readers began these books 
at the first page and read them patiently to 
the last word, and made marks on the margin 
as they went along, and then put them away 
on a shelf in their library, and forgot all about 
them. Some said that they were dull books, 
and hard to read. But to a few they were the 
word of God : to them God spoke out of the 
printed page, and they heard what He said, 
and took it into their lives and lived it. This 
they did because they were prepared to read. 
It is Andrew's story over again. 

How did Andrew do it ? That is what we 
want to know. How did he come to attend 
so much more closely than other men to the 
word of John the Baptist ? How did he make 
his way, where we would also enter, into the 
presence of the Master of the Soul ? 



THE PEOGEESS OP AKDEEW. 41 

Andrew was a fisherman who thought about 
something besides fish. That was the first 
stage in his progress. 

The fact is made plain by his attendance 
here, at the Jordan ferry, so many miles from 
home, among the disciples of John the Baptist. 
It does not imply that there was in him any 
lack of attention to business. He was no 
dreamy angler, who fished against his will, 
without much luck, watching the clouds rather 
than the nets. So far as we may guess at him, 
from the brief record, he appears to have been 
among the more enterprising of the citizens of 
the fishing town in which he lived. He did 
not go into the ministry because he had no 
head for business. He had probably come 
down from Galilee to the cities of Judea, with 
John and Peter, on a business errand, to sell 
the catch. For such a mission, a man would 
be chosen who had judgment and energy, who 
knew men and could make a bargain. Even 
thus he appears as more than a mere pursuer 
of fish. But now, we may conjecture, the 
bartering is over, and according to the quiet, 
slow way of that long-ago time, there are some 
days to spare, and down goes Andrew from the 
fish stalls to hear John the Baptist preach. 
His mind was not altogether given over to 
fish. 



42 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

That, we may say, was the beginning of the 
difference between Andrew and most other 
men of his occupation and acquaintance. The 
streets were full of busy folk in those times, 
as they are to-day, who were intent with hands 
and eyes and ears and minds and souls upon 
their daily tasks. They were absorbed in 
business. They had no time or thought for 
any other thing in life. There were men 
whom Andrew knew, any number of them, de- 
cent enough, properly behaved, present in the 
synagogue every pleasant Sabbath day, but 
who did almost nothing else but fish, who were 
not really interested in anj^thing but fish. In 
Boston, under the dome of the state-house, 
hangs the figure of a fish, a symbol of the in- 
dustry by which the citizens in the colonial 
times made themselves rich. It is to Massa- 
chusetts what the golden fleece was to the 
Netherlands. That would have precisely 
suited Reuben, and Simeon and Levi and 
Judah, and most of the other men whose boats 
were in the Sea of Galilee. They would have 
hung a golden fish in the Capernaum syna- 
gogue. 

If they ever heard it said, years after, that 
one of their companions, John, the son of Zebe- 
dee, had written a book in which he pictured 
heaven as a place in which there was no more 



THE PEOGRESS OF ANDREW. 43 

sea, and consequently no more fish, thej^ must 
have received the assertion with amazement or 
amusement. Their idea of beatific happiness 
included a stout boat, and a strong net, and a 
good haul of fish. 

Other men were equally absorbed in other 
ways : some in their shops, some in their 
books. Down went their eyes towards their 
bargains or their parchments, and down went 
their minds in the same direction. Human 
nature was not greatly different from that 
with which we are at present acquainted. 
Andrew, too, was profoundly interested in his 
daily work, as every honest and earnest man 
should be, but it did not constitute the sum 
and substance of his life. He thought of 
other things beside. 

That was the first stage in Andrew's prog- 
ress. The next advance he made was in the 
choice of his friends. 

Andrew found a few like-minded friends, 
most of them fisherfolk, like himself. There 
was his brother, Simon Peter, and their part- 
ners, two other brothers, James and John. 
Philip was their neighbor. And Philip 
brought into the little group, a friend of his, 
Nathaniel. These six young men, we maj^ 
guess, had known each other since they were 
boys. A notable group, who are still remem- 



44 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

bered after all the changing centuries ; who 
made up an exact half of the twelve apostles, 
the friends of Jesus : this was the company 
which Andrew kept. 

These young men talked together every 
day ; sometimes, no doubt, about the fish, and 
the weather, and their neighbors, as human 
beings will, but often, it is plain, about the su- 
preme matter, about those high subjects which 
we include under the head of religion. They 
had much confidential, sympathetic, religious 
talk together. When such young fellows, out 
on the water fishing, talk with their associates 
of the eternal realities, and discuss them with 
their own brothers, we may be sure that they 
mean what they say, and are in earnest about 
it. For it is easy enough to talk religion in a 
pulpit, or in any place where one may stand up 
by himself and make a set speech in a conven- 
tional voice. But in common, daily conver- 
sation, where we must speak familiarly, our 
actual selves appear. Any affectation or un- 
reality rings false. 

These were Andrew's friends, these alert 
young business men, who cared as he did not 
for their business only but for the wide world's 
business, and who talked of things worth talk- 
ing about while they waited for the fish. Thus 
they helped one another ; he assisted them, and 



THE PKOGRESS OF ANDREW. 45 

they encouraged him. That is the meaning 
and the purpose of all society. The wise man, 
who looks out of the windows of his office or 
his shop, makes friends with other men who 
like to work by a window. And they compare 
experiences, one having seen this, and another 
having seen that, and thus each man looks out 
of many windows, and sees life in many 
aspects. Thus it was that Jesus promised the 
blessing of His special presence to the group 
rather than to the individual. 

The beginning, then, of Andrew's progress 
was in the largeness of his interests ; and the 
next step was in the helpfulness of his friends. 
The third stage was in the fact that he was 
not contented. 

We may easily read between the lines that 
these young men were deeply dissatisfied both 
with the prevailing condition of the church 
and with themselves. For by and by, when 
Andrew hears John speak and follows Jesus, 
at once he hastens to his brother Simon, cry- 
ing : " We have found Him ! " And wath the 
same announcement, in precisely the same 
words, Philip greets Nathaniel : " We have 
found Him ! " Whom have they found ? 
Evidently they had found Him for whom their 
hearts had longed, about whose coming they 
had conversed in their fraternal conferences, 



4:G THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

at the meetings of that primitive brotherhood 
of six, out of which came the Christian church. 
They had found at last the knight, the sage, 
the saint, the hero of their dreams : the leader, 
the teacher, the reformer of all that was mean 
and unworthy within them and about them, — 
the Messiah who should deliver Israel, and 
more than Israel. They were in search of 
larger truth, had their hearts and minds re- 
ceptively open, wished to be better men and to 
please God, and to be taught how. 

Thus they took all that the synagogue could 
give them, and made the most of it. And out 
of the services they carried home great sen- 
tences read from the Word of God, and made 
new sermons about them : better sermons than 
anybody in the synagogue could preach, be- 
cause they were their own, and dealt with their 
own difficulties, their own short-comings, and 
their own ideals. 

When they heard that there was a new 
preacher, standing at the ford of the Jordan, 
and addressing all passengers, no matter who 
they were, with an impartial reminder of their 
sins, they went to hear Him. At least, An- 
drew went, and John. This they did, because 
it was consistent with their daily habit. It 
was the kind of thing which they were always 
doing: looking for more truth, listening for 



THE PROGRESS OF ANDREW. 47 

messages from heaven. The streets and mar- 
kets were crowded with contented people, 
looking for nothing except their daily bread. 
There they were when John the Baptist began 
to preach ; and there they were, the same peo- 
ple, in the same place, when he stopped preach- 
ing: still as a stagnant pond. Not a word 
touched them ; the great winds of God were 
blowing out of all the clouds ; but where they 
were the air never so much as stirred. These 
were the people whom Andrew left behind 
when he went to hear the sermon at the river. 

Then, the day after, as Andrew stood in the 
company of the new master, Jesus of Naza- 
reth passed by, and Andrew saw Him. John 
the Baptist pointed Him out : Behold the lamb 
of God, which taketh away the sin of the 
world ! So there He was, for whom Andrew 
had been looking all his life. Year by year 
he had been making himself ready for that 
day ; he had been preparing himself for that 
opportunity; he had been learning to recognize 
Christ when he saw Him. Others who had 
come out with him heard John speak, but they 
did not understand. Andrew understood and 
followed. He was looking for the best, and 
he found the best. 

You see, that all this is possible for ns, be- 
cause it was possible for him : it was within 



48 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

the reach of a person like ourselves. We can- 
not, indeed, enter as he did into the visible 
presence of our Lord ; but we can find Him 
just as truly, we can be just as sure of Him, 
we can be blessed with the same blessing. 

Let us take Andrew's road. Let us steadily 
maintain an interest in something higher than 
our daily business ; let us enrich ourselves with 
precious friendships ; let us be persistently in- 
tent on the attainment of the best, reading 
the best books, thinking the best thoughts, 
following the best light we have, doing our 
best. So shall we come into the supreme rev- 
elation: we shall know Him whom to know 
is strength and joy and life eternal. 



THE DAMNATION OF DIYES. 

And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments. — Luke 
16:23. 

He has no name. He is called the rich 
man ; or, as it stood in Latin, Dives. It is 
the beggar who is named. It is true that the 
rich man in his lack of a name resembles most 
of the other people of the parables. Our 
Lord almost never named the characters which 
He introduced into these illustrative stories. 
But He did name the beggar. So that there 
is here presented this interesting contrast : 
everybody knows the names of rich men, few 
know the names of beggars ; but there was a 
certain rich man whose name is not mentioned, 
and there lay at his gate, in dire poverty and 
pain, a certain beggar named Lazarus. 

It is a small thing, and may be without 
meaning. The beggar may have been an 
actual person, whom our Lord knew. 
Jesus was the friend of the residents of the 
street, and must have been acquainted with a 
good many beggars. The beggar may have 
died that day, in his rags and sores, altogether 
a pitiable person as it seemed ; and Jesus may 



50 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

have meant to show His disciples that he was 
a spiritual prince in disguise. There He had 
sat at the corner of the street who was in 
truth fit for the society of Abraham. 

Or perhaps this distinction of a name, 
denied to Dives and given to Lazarus, signi- 
fies the difference between Christ's way of re- 
garding men and the common way. It is an 
illustration of His disregard of things artificial, 
external and inconsequent. A friendless beg- 
gar, covered with sores, and consorting with 
street dogs, was at no disadvantage in our 
Lord's sight compared with a rich man, clad in 
silk attire, sitting at the head of his handsome 
table. If the beggar were rich in the im- 
perishable treasure, and the rich man were 
poor in the currency of heaven, that made a 
distinction which reversed all common esti- 
mates. 

At last, to Lazarus on the curbstone, and to 
the nameless rich man in his palace, came the 
messenger who has no respect of persons : 
they both died. The beggar died, and so far 
as this earth was concerned, that was the end 
of him. The rich man, when he died, " was 
buried " ; that is, with ceremony. He had a 
stately funeral. So they slept, the rich man 
and the beggar, and awoke in the world be- 
yond. But there, what an amazing change. 



THE DAMNATIOJS^ OF DIVES. 51 

The beggar was in Abraham's bosom. There 
he sat among the saints and patriarchs, 
in a place of honor. It is a domestic picture, 
quite different from the stately visions of 
Isaiah and St. John, with their smoke of in- 
cense, and dim forms of worshipers, and 
cherubim with sheltering wings, and in the 
midst One high and lifted up. Or shall we say 
that this is a glimpse not of the heaven of the 
church triumphant but of the paradise of the 
church expectant? Anyhow, the beggar is a 
person of importance in that company. The 
table is spread and Abraham and Isaac 
and Jacob are sitting down to supper, 
and there is the beggar in Abraham's bosom. 
The phrase is to be understood by com- 
parison with the account of the Last Supper, 
where the apostle whom Jesus loved leaned 
on His breast. That is, in the fashion 
of that day and place, they reclined on couches 
at their meals, each resting on his left arm : 
first the host, then next to him, leaning on 
his breast, the person of most honor. There 
was the beggar. But as for the rich man, " in 
hell he lift up his eyes being in torments." 
Over the way, in plain sight of the supper 
table of the saints, with a deep cleft between, 
burned the flames of the pit unquenchable. 
And the beggar looked that way, and there 



52 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

was Dives. That fine gentleman, that hospi* 
table host and eminent citizen — the mendicant 
who asked for alms beside the road is better 
off than he. To such a pass has come that 
easy, successful, and delightful life. 

Was it because the man was rich? Was 
that the offense for which he fell into this 
deep misery ? 

It is true that our Lord said some things 
about the rich which they who have great pos- 
sessions must find hard reading. It is said 
that the eye of the needle was a narrow pas- 
sage between rocks, which a camel could 
squeeze through: but even then, the illustra- 
tion is not a reassuring one. It must be re- 
membered, however, on the other hand, that 
Jesus chose one group of His nearest friends 
from among the very rich. We read the story 
of Mary and Martha in the light of our New 
England domestic life, and they appear to 
be maiden ladies, in somewhat straightened 
circumstances, who are doing their own house- 
work. But the incident of the alabaster box 
shows them in quite a different aspect. Here 
is one who would bring to the Master some 
token of her reverence and love. In her room, 
among the curious ornaments upon her dress- 
ing-table, is an alabaster box of very precious 
ointment. The disciples, whispering among 



THE BAMKATION OF DIVES. 53 

themselves, and guessing at its value, make it 
out to be worth at least three hundred pence ; 
and since a penny, as we learn elsewhere, was 
a fair days' wage, that would represent several 
hundred dollars. This she takes, and breaks 
it at His feet. It is plain that this is no family 
of narrow means. Mary and Martha, very near 
friends of Jesus, were as rich as Dives. It is 
true that there was a Lazarus, who was a beg- 
gar in the street ; but there was also a Lazarus 
who was a man of wealth. He was rich like 
Dives, and was a friend of Jesus. 

There is spiritual danger connected with the 
possession of wealth. The Bible has great 
fears about men who have large means; but 
they are like the fears of the insurance com- 
panies about men w^ho work in powder mills. 
The insurance companies have no personal dis- 
like to these men. They do not by any means 
assert that such men will certainly be blown to 
pieces. But they know that a powder mill did 
explode the other day, and that other powder 
mills have exploded before, and they decline to 
take the risk. 

The rich man is in spiritual danger because 
it is so easy and natural for him to be wholly 
occupied with things temporal and material. 
Where his treasure is, there will his heart be 
also. His thought and life will be filled with 



54 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

the consideration of that which can be seen 
and felt and weighed and measured and 
counted. No man makes a great deal of 
money without giving his mind to it. And it 
is plainly possible to give one's mind so lav- 
ishly and unreservedly to this business that 
there is no interest or attention left for any- 
thing else. Indeed, to one who is entirely 
occupied with these matters, the enthusiasms, 
enjoyments, and purposes of religion must in 
the nature of things seem rather vague, and 
hard to understand. He is concerned with the 
present and the practical. When he is invited, 
like the man in the other parable, to a great 
supper which is the type of spiritual privilege, 
he says at once, " I have bought a piece of 
ground, and I must needs go and see it : I 
pray thee, have me excused " ; or '^ I have 
bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove 
them : I pray thee, have me excused." That 
is, the man of wealth, — who has got it and so 
is a rich man actually, or who is trying to get it 
and so is a rich man potentially — is in danger 
of caring for nothing else. That is the tempta- 
tion : and the more money a man has the better 
he knows how strong the temptation is. 

But no man will lose his soul because he has 
a great deal of money. The day of judgment 
will not be a time for the examination of men's 



THE DAMNATION OF DIVES. 55 

bank accounts. There is no wickedness in be- 
ing wealthy. Some people talk as if prosper- 
ity ought to be punished, and as if everybody 
ought to sell whatever he possesses and make 
it over to the poor. It is true that the Master 
did set that duty at one man's door : no doubt, 
because He saw that that was exactly what 
that particular j^oung man needed for his soul's 
health. But He preached no such doctrine to 
other rich men whom he met. The damnation 
of Dives was not a punishment for being rich. 

What then? He had always had a good 
time, — was that it? Was it there that he 
made his failure? 

The pleasures of the rich man are recounted 
in the parable. He wore good clothes, attiring 
himself in the handsome and fashionable pur- 
ple and fine linen of his time. He fared 
sumptuously, giving and receiving banquets: 
and living in luxury every day. 

And it is plain that there is spiritual danger in 
such a life as this. It is not only the pursuit of 
wealth but the enjoyment of it which menaces 
the soul. This is written large in history, 
where again and again in the experience of 
races, of churches, and of institutions, increase 
of pleasure has been accompanied by decrease 
of piety. They have been given their desire, 
as it says in the psalm, and leanness withal has 



56 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

entered into their soul. So it has been with 
nations, which have become rich, and have en- 
tered into the joys which wealth makes possi- 
ble, and then have fallen before some simpler 
people, who are strong with the sturdy- 
strength of plain living. So it has been with 
monasteries, which have begun in the fear of 
God and in the spirit of self-sacrifice, in holy 
poverty, and then becoming rich with the 
gifts of their grateful neighbors, have grown 
idle and negligent, eating and drinking more 
and praying less, till they have come to be a 
shame and a scandal. And the same tempta- 
tions assail all prosperous persons. They who 
are contented with their surroundings are 
easily contented with themselves, and that is 
the end of spiritual growth. It was with 
knowledge of human nature that the petition 
was put in the litany, " In all time of our pros- 
perity, good Lord, deliver us." Indeed, if we 
look for disregard of religion, for lives lived 
without much thought of God, for days begun 
without prayer and weeks begun without 
praise, for devotion to that which is temporal 
and neglect of that which is eternal, we will find 
too much of it among those to whom God has 
given unusual privileges and set them in the 
midst of pleasures. 

But to be happy is no sin. God has put us 



THE DAMNATION OF DIVES. 57 

in this world that we may live this life. It is 
His will that we take from His generous 
hand all the good pleasure that there is : this 
world's pleasure now, and the next world's 
pleasure when we come to it. All happiness 
of soul and mind and sense to-day, and all new 
happiness which awaits us under new condi- 
tions to-morrow. There is no merit in being 
miserable. There is no contradiction between 
a smiling face and the sermon on the mount. 
The Christian religion sanctions and approves 
of every good natural pleasure which has ever 
entered into the heart of man. No doubt but 
the rich man's life was merry and joyful. But 
that was not what was the matter with him. 
The damnation of Dives was not a punishment 
for having lived a pleasant life. 

Why was it, then, that in hell he lift up 
his eyes being in torments? He was a rich 
man : but that was not it. He was clothed in 
purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously 
every day : but that was not it. Why did he 
lose his soul ? Dives lost his soul because, 
being rich and happy, he had been satisfied 
with that. He had found the material side of 
life so pleasant that he had been content to 
live simply on that plane. He had encoun- 
tered the perils of prosperity, and had suffered 
spiritual defeat. 



58 THE HUMAN NATUKE OF THE SAINTS. 

When he asks that Lazarus may be sent 
over with a drop of water to cool his tongue, 
he is answered, " Son, remember that thou in 
thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and 
likewise Lazarus evil things : but now he is 
comforted and thou art tormented." That 
seems for a moment to mean that there is for 
each of us a fixed amount of good and evil 
fortune, and that if we have pleasure and pros- 
perity here, we must not look for pleasure and 
prosperity hereafter. But there is plainly 
some mistake about that. Our Lord did not 
mean that. That is not His doctrine of the 
providence of God. That is not His interpre- 
tation of the fatherhood of God. 

No ; the words are to be understood like 
the sentence in the sermon on the mount, 
"They have their reward." The men w^ho 
give alms or say prayers in order to be seen 
of men have their reward, such as it is. The 
people who devote themselves entirely to the 
material satisfactions of life receive their good 
things. They enjoy the blessings of the 
senses. Dives had received his good things. 
He had decided, consciously or unconsciously, 
that what he supremely desired was to succeed 
in business and to have a good time in society. 
That is what he desired, and he got it. He 
makes his confession in his prayer for his five 



THE DAMNATION OF DIVES. 59 

brothers. There they are living the same kind 
of life which he had lived, and coming inevi- 
tably, if they keep on, to the same place. They 
are receiving their good things. And their 
good things are of the sort to which death puts 
an end. Presently they will die, and at that 
moment everything that they possess will 
perish : because everything that they possess 
is perishable. There they go, briskly and 
gayly walking towards the brink of the place 
of torment. And there are Moses and the 
prophets standing by the side of the road and 
telling them plainly, but in vain, where the 
road ends. That is, there is the church and 
the ministers of religion teaching day by day 
that he who seeks the pleasures of the senses 
only, shall have the pleasures of the senses only, 
and after that the judgment. The rich man 
had heard their sermons in a dull, conventional, 
confused way, with his eyes shut : but they 
had meant nothing to him. Moses and the 
prophets had been no more to him than the 
saints of the painted windows. 

That is, the life which ended in this total 
failure had been a life of the body only. That 
was the cause of the damnation of Dives. The 
man had lost his soul because he had never 
taken the slightest pains to save his soul. He 
had no place with Abraham and Isaac and 



60 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

Jacob because he had never taken the least 
interest in the things that patriarchs and 
prophets, and men of God care for. He was 
no more fitted for that excellent company than 
a tramp on a freight-car would be fitted for a 
lecture in philosophy. He had addressed him- 
self wholly to that which gratifies the senses. 
To the higher part of his nature, to that which 
survives the body and is everlasting, he had 
paid no heed. And he went to his own place, 
as they said of Judas. That is what happened 
to him. He went to his own place, where he 
properly belonged, as we all will. 

It is an illustration of the great saying: 
Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
reap. Dives had sown to the flesh and of the 
flesh had reaped corruption. Lazarus had 
sown to the spirit, and of the spirit had reaped 
life everlasting. 



THE EEALITY OF THE TEMPTATION. 

And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilder- 
ness. — Mark 1 : 12. 

Our Lord went into the wilderness in order 
to be alone to think. 

He had come from Nazareth to the bank of 
the Jordan to hear a new prophet preach. 
Hundreds of others had come upon the same 
errand. The crowd was great, and He was an 
unnoticed member of it. Even when John 
the Baptist said, " There standeth One among 
you whom ye know not," nobody looked at 
Him. It is not likely that He Himself real- 
ized that the words meant Him. He looked 
about, like His neighbors, wondering who the 
Great Unknown might be. It is true that 
when the prophet presently addressed Him, He 
met the marvelous announcement with entire 
composure. " Suffer it," He said, " to be so 
now." But the event of the temptation seems 
to show that He was taken by surprise. If 
He had come prepared for this, expecting this, 
there would have been no need of the wilder- 
ness. The story would have gone on, as in- 
deed it does in St. John's Gospel, without a 

61 



62 THE HUMAK NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

break : after the baptism, not the temptation, 
but at once the ministry. 

Out of the Galilean hills He had come down, 
this carpenter of Nazareth, being now thirty 
years of age, — a maker of doors, who was Him- 
self to be the door of life eternal ; a framer of 
windows, who was to open the windows of 
heaven for revelation and for benediction ; a 
builder of houses, who was to prepare man- 
sions in the celestial country. And as He 
stood, in all humility, amongst the throng, 
John had singled Him out. That great 
prophet, that new Elijah, to whose preaching 
even the Pharisees were for the moment 
giving their attention, had suddenly stopped 
in his sermon at the sight of this working man 
from Galilee, and had pronounced Him his spir- 
itual superior: " This is He of whom I spoke : 
this is He of whom I said that ye knew Him 
not, and whom I knew not till the light in the 
sky and in His face revealed Him : this is He 
whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down 
and unloose." And from above had come a 
vision and a voice, verifying it all. 

" And immediately," — for here is where the 
aote of time is touched, — " the Spirit driveth 
Eim into the wilderness." The Spirit spoke 
in the silence of His soul. He was conscious 
of an inner compulsion. He heard an in- 



THE REALITY OF THE TEMPT ATIOK. 63 

audible but none the less imperative voice, 
saying, " Go, get you away into the wilder- 
ness " ; and He obeyed, and went. That was 
what followed the strange utterance of John 
the Baptist, and the strange sense of recog- 
nition with which Jesus met it. He went 
into the wilderness to think. 

The gospel records and our own reflections 
assure us that Jesus must have learned who 
He was, little by little. The statement that 
He increased in wisdom is a certificate of that. 
And the fact that unless He had increased in 
wisdom He would have been no true human 
man emphasizes it. It must be remembered 
that the doctrine of the incarnation is not a 
doctrine of the divinity of Christ only. Men 
have held the doctrine of the divinity of 
Christ with all ardor and adoration, who have 
nevertheless been pronounced heretics by gen- 
eral councils of the church because they have 
omitted or obscured the truth of His hu- 
manity. They have made it out that being 
God, He was somehow other than a human 
man. The doctrine of the incarnation asserts 
the divinity and the humanity of Christ at the 
same time. It is essential to it that Jesus 
Christ was truly man. He could not have 
been truly man if as He sat among the boys 
in the schoolroom at Nazareth, He had been 



64 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

composing the Sermon on the Mount. He 
could not have been truly man, if He had 
known at the beginning what He knew at the 
end of His ministry. He increased in wisdom, 
day by day learning more about the world in 
which He lived, more about the humanity of 
which He had become a part, more about God 
in whose favor He grew continually, more 
about Himself. 

And now to-day beside the Jordan are 
strange voices saying strange things. And 
there is a strange new consciousness in His 
own heart, a consciousness of power, of per- 
sonality, of possibility, such as He has never 
had before. Long ago among the hills, look- 
ing out over the green plain. He had had long 
thoughts, as a boy will, but they had been the 
thoughts of a boy. "Working in His shop, 
among the shavings, breathing the clean sweet 
odor of the wood, He had seen visions, the 
visions of a vigorous young manhood. But 
this which fills His mind and heart to-day is a 
new thing. The moment is one of crisis. A 
great, new, marvelous truth has entered into 
His life. And He is saying over and over 
to Himself, again and again, trying to under- 
stand it in the fulness of its infinite meaning, 
" I am the Messiah ! I am the Christ ! I am 
He for whom society has all along been look- 



THE REALITY OF THE TEMPTATION. 65 

ing and waiting ! I am come in answer to the 
prayers of the ages ! I am the servant of the 
Highest, the ambassador of heaven, the Son of 
God, the Saviour of the world ! " 

It is plain that a man cannot go about the 
streets saying such words. It is plain that he 
cannot go back to his day's work for his day's 
wages, making carts and mending roofs. The 
great message has set a sharp separation be- 
tween this day and all the other past days. 
What shall He do ? He must get away. He 
must seek solitude ; He must find a place where 
He can think and pray and plan. He must 
adjust Himself to a new life. The summons of 
the spirit is very urgent, — of His own spirit, 
and of God's spirit. He is immediately driven 
into the wilderness. 

And then, what happens ? He is tempted. 
And tempted to do what ? To turn stones into 
bread, to cast Himself from a pinnacle of the 
temple, and to kneel down before the devil. 
What does it mean ? Where is the connection 
between the desert and the river, between the 
temptation and the baptism, between these 
very different voices, — one from above saying, 
" This is My beloved Son," the other from be- 
neath saying, " If Thou art the Son of God" 
do this and that? The two belong together, 
like the light and the shadow. Our Lord is 



66 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

entering here into a universal human experi- 
ence. This is the common spiritual sequence. 
First, the high ideal, recognized and resolved 
upon: the new life entered: the supreme 
choice definitely made. Then depression, 
doubt, discouragement, asking of anxious ques- 
tions. 

Elijah, for example, confronts the priests of 
Baal. In a land forgetful of God, indifferent 
to Him, defiant of Him, he stands up suddenly 
alone, splendidly bold, on God's side. Then 
he goes away, and hides himself in a desolate 
wilderness, and cries aloud to the rocks and 
the sky that his life is a miserable failure. 
There they are, the two voices, from above 
and from beneath. Elijah had his bap- 
tism, in the rain which came down in 
answer to his prayer, and then, in the desert, 
his temptation followed. 

You know that there are three significant 
years in the life of St. Paul of which we are 
told nothing. He beholds the heavenly vision, 
which suddenly stands like a pillar of fire be- 
tween his past and his future ; in Damascus, he 
learns in detail the truth which from that mo- 
ment changes his whole life. And what does 
he do then ? He goes into Arabia. He takes 
himself out of the sight of all men, whether 
Jews or Christians, out of the hearing of all 



THE REALITY OF THE TEMPTATION. 67 

human voices, into the bleak desert, into the 
land of rocks and solitude. And there he stays 
three years. In the history of his life the 
space of these three years is blank, totally 
blank. So far as we know, St. Paul never 
spoke of that experience : he never told what 
happened. But we may guess. He was driven 
by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted 
of the devil. This new truth, which summons 
you to contradict all that you have said and 
stood for, which calls you to a career of pov- 
erty and difficulty and tragedy, — is it true ? 
May there not be some mistake about it ? 
And if it is true, what does it mean? What 
does it mean for you ? The apostle went into 
the desert to meet the devil. And the devil 
asked him these questions. And it took the 
apostle three years to answer them. That was 
His temptation in the wilderness. First, the 
heavenly vision on the Damascus road ; then 
the long contention with doubt and desire and 
the devil in Arabia. 

It all belongs to human experience. Jesus 
Christ, in His temptation, shares our common 
life. We understand Him, and He under- 
stands us the better for it. 

"IamtheSonofGod,"Hesays,overandover; 
" I am the Son of God." Are you the Son of 
God ? Are you sure of it ? You poor country 



68 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

carpenter, bred among the hills and fields, 
thirty years old and up to this hour quite with- 
out achievement, are you the Son of God ? The 
splendid affirmation changes into inquiry. 
The sun of assurance goes behind the clouds 
of doubt. The great truth is too great even 
for the great man. "If," he begins to say, 
"if," "if." If you are the Son of God, prove 
it to yourself : make these stones into loaves of 
bread. If you are the Son of God, prove it 
to the people : go, leap from a turret of the 
temple, and let God your Father send His 
angels to catch you in their hands. 

You see how natural, how logical, how in- 
evitable the temptation was. The great truth 
about Himself comes for the first time in its 
fulness of meaning, in its fulness of conse- 
quence, before the human mind of Jesus, with 
all that it implies of change, and responsibil- 
it}^, and mission, and leadership, and divinity, 
and tragedy, and He goes away where He can 
be alone to think about it, and as He thinks, 
these are His thoughts, these great tempta- 
tions. 

They begin with doubt, but they do not 
stay there. The first temptation and the 
second open with the word "if" : but there is 
no "if" in the third. He has got past doubt. 
He knows now that He is verily the Son of God. 



THE KEALITY OP THE TEMPTATION. 69 

But being the Son of God, what shall He do ? 
Bow shall He live His life ? If I am the Son 
of God, what is the Kingdom of God ? Is it 
meat and drink, or is it righteousness and 
truth ? Is it a material kingdom, as everybody 
thinks, or a spiritual kingdom ? If I am the 
Son of God, and the Kingdom of God is the 
reign of righteousness and truth, how shall I set 
about to advance it? Shall I speak in the 
common words of the synagogue and of the 
street, using in truth's behalf only the compul- 
sion of the truth, or shall I enforce truth by 
appealing to men's sense of wonder, appear- 
ing to them descending from the clouds ? 
Shall I preach ideal righteousness, and in- 
sist that men shall live in an ideal way, 
setting them an example, heedless whether it 
be accounted wise or foolish, practicable or 
impracticable ; or shall I accommodate myself 
to the actual conditions, taking men as they are, 
and for the impossible best substituting the pos- 
sible good ; shall I not for the general good 
come to some reasonable understanding with 
the devil ? 

These were some of the questions which are 
represented by the three temptations : natural 
questions, diificult questions, — difficult because, 
as the phrase is, there is so much to be said 
on both sides. They were essential questions. 



70 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

Before He speaks a word aloud, these must be 
settled. There He was in the wilderness, 
fighting these things out. 

Our Lord was actually tempted. That is 
the initial fact. He was tempted like as we 
are. 

The record of the temptations makes it suflBi- 
ciently plain that what we have here is a para- 
ble rather than a history, or a picture rather 
than a page from a diary. This appears, for 
instance, in the part which is here taken by 
the devil. The devil is represented as person- 
ally encountering the Master. He points to 
the smooth stones ; he transports Jesus first to 
the top of the temple and then to the top of 
the hill, and on these eminences he stands be- 
side Him, talking with Him. This, unless it 
has a meaning deeper than appears upon the 
surface, takes out of the temptation all of its 
reality. From the instant when the devil 
actually appears upon the scene, the tempta- 
tion ceases to be a temptation. For it is 
essential to a genuine temptation that it must 
be tempting. There must be something so at- 
tractive about it, so deceptive, so persuasive, 
that even a good man shall feel inclined to 
accept its invitation. The choice which we all 
make, sinners though we are, is not between 
the known good and the known bad : it is be- 




THE EEALITY OF THE TEMPTATION. 71 

tween two courses of action each of which ap- 
pears to be good. It is very rarely that we 
sin, saying boldly to ourselves, "This is 
plainly in defiance of the will of God, but I 
will do it." No, we somehow persuade our- 
selves that darkness is light, and evil is good. 
We do the bidding of the devil, but in order to 
get us to do it he has to disguise himself so 
that we may not recognize him. If the devil 
came, the plain devil, and said, " Do this," we 
would not do it. It is not in that manner that 
we are tempted. Still less, was Christ thus 
tempted. The sight of the tempter, the conse- 
quent knowledge that the suggestion of his 
pointing finger was the suggestion of evil, 
would have made any true temptation totally 
impossible. 

The account of our Lord's temptation is 
therefore to be compared with that other word 
where He said, " I beheld Satan as lightning 
fall from heaven." What did that mean? 
Plainly it meant the ultimate defeat of error. 
The disciples came and told the Master that 
they had gone ministering to men as He had 
instructed them, and that the effects were 
remarkable. " Lord," they said, " even the 
devils are subject unto us through Thy name." 
"Yes," He answered, " while you were gone, I 
saw the great devil himself fall out of the 



72 THE HUMAN NATTJRi: OF THE SAINTS. 

sky." That is, I saw the power of evil cast 
down from his high seat. 

After the temptation in the wilderness Jesus 
tried to make His disciples understand it. He 
had been grievously tempted, tempted to 
doubt His own personality, tempted to depart 
now in this direction, and now in that, from 
His high ideal. He wished to help His dis- 
ciples, partly by showing them that He was 
able to have sympathy with them in their own 
temptations, and partly by assuring them from 
His own experience that it was possible to 
resist even the mightiest, even the subtlest of 
temptations. And He did it, not in our occi- 
dental fashion, but in the natural manner of 
His own time and land. He did it by a para- 
ble, or a picture. He did it, that is, in a way 
to appeal to all people of all lands and times. 
The devil came. He said, and spoke to Me. 

True ? It was more profoundly true — yes, 
in the best sense, more practically true — than 
all the accurate statements of all the arithme- 
tic and history that have been written since 
the children of Cain built the first city. Let 
us diligently disabuse our minds of the false 
and misleading notion that nothing is true 
except the verifiable assertions of plain prose. 
Poetry is true, pictures are true, even fiction is 
true, whenever the poet or the artist or the 



THE EEALITY OF THE TEMPTATION. 73 

author tells the truth. Not the fact : that is 
anotherand a lesser matter. The first chapters 
of the first Book of Chronicles are filled with 
facts : there is nothing there but facts. And 
nobody can read them. "And the sons of 
Caleb, the brother of Jerahmeel were Mesha 
his first-born which was the father of Ziph, 
and the sons of Mareshah the father of 
Hebron. And the sons of Hebron ; Korah and 
Tappuah and Rekem and Shema. And 
Shema begat Kaham the father of Jorkoam ; 
and Rekem begat Shammai." So it goes on, 
one hard name after another interminably : 
fact upon fact. The parable of the prodigal 
son, on the other hand, has not a fact in it, 
from beginning to end. There was no prod- 
igal son ; there was no famine ; there was no 
father, no fatted calf, no elder brother. This 
was a beautiful story which Jesus told ; and He 
made it up, every word of it. But it is never- 
theless so true, =— so vitally, so eternally, so 
searchingly and blessedly true, — that all the 
studious saints from the beginning of the 
gospel to this present day, have not discov- 
ered all its truth. Nothing can be more true 
than the parable of the prodigal son. 

So it is with the story of the temptation of 
Christ. It has no place in the world of fact. 
Taken literally, it never happened. Jesus and 



74 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

the devil never stood side by side looking 
down upon the hard paving-stones of the 
courtyard of the temple. And Jesus never 
intended us to think for a moment that they 
did. When we read the record as if it were 
an account in a newspaper, He asks us, as He 
asked His disciples on a like occasion, How is it 
that ye do not understand ? The temptation 
belongs not to the world of statistical fact but 
to the world of spiritual truth. It is the re- 
port of an experience so tremendous that it 
could not be told in the common terms of 
every-day narration. Every word of it is true ; 
every syllable of it is true ; but its meaning is 
not upon the surface, but beneath it. The 
longer we live, the longer the race lives, the 
more we understand how true the story of the 
temptation is. 

Jesus Christ was both truly and sorely 
tempted, in the wilderness and out of it. It is 
significantly said at the end of one of the ac- 
counts of the temptation that " the devil de- 
parted from Him for a season." Yes, for a 
season, coming back again, with new perplex- 
ities, new problems, new deceptions. Once 
our Lord spoke of His whole ministry as a 
series of temptations, saying to His disciples, 
" Ye are they which have continued with Me 
in My temptations." It is even said of Him, 



THE EEALITY OF THE TEMPTATIOIT. 75 

in words much bolder than we would venture 
to use to-day, that He learned obedience by the 
things which He suffered : as if, even for Him, 
obedience was a lesson hard to learn. He had 
to learn it, as we do, taught by the divine 
tuition of painful experience. We commonly 
think of Him as being so perfectly good by 
birth and nature that He never had to try. 
But the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
says that He did have to try, and try hard. 
And the story of the temptation illustrates it. 
" We have not an high priest that cannot be 
touched with the feeling of our infirmities : 
but was in all points tempted like as we are." 
It is true that the writer immediately adds, 
"Yet without sin." But it is plain that He 
was not easily without sin. He conquered in 
the wilderness, and in every other place, but 
never without a battle. 

The story that is written in glowing color in 
the Boston Public Library is not the only story 
of the Holy Grail. Galahad is not the only 
hero of that mediaeval legend. It is told to 
the accompaniment of solemn music how 
Parsifal achieved the Grail. The most sig- 
nificant difference between the two is that 
Galahad wins with ease, but Parsifal with dif- 
ficulty. Galahad is born good, and stays good, 
and never meets a champion who does him any 



76 THE HUMAN NATUBE OF THE SAINTS. 

serious hurt. On he goes, serene and confi- 
dent, as if the quest of the Grail were but a 
summer journey along a shady lane. But 
Parsifal is one of us. He has our human 
nature. He lights our human battles, while 
we hold our breath wondering whether he 
will win or not; he meets our own tempta- 
tions and finds them terribly hard, as we 
do, struggles with them, wrestles with them, 
is weary and heavy-laden, hurt and bleeding. 
When he achieves the vision of the Grail, 
it is not with smiling face and shining armor. 
Parsifal is the true hero of the search for the 
Holy Grail, not the serene Galahad. 

In the story of the temptation, the Son of 
God shows us that He is the Son of Man. 
The divine master, the Lord of life, assures us 
that He is of our kin and kind, flesh of our 
flesh. He suffers with us, as well as for us : 
and is perfectly good, but not easily good. 

Yet Christ is at the same time divine ; He is 
the express image of the Heavenly Father ; 
He is God, manifest in man. To such a being, 
how can our human temptations have reality ? 
How can they touch Him ? Did He not look 
on, past the eyes of the tempter, into the face 
of the eternal ? Was not the desert crowded, 
rank on rank, with the horsemen and the char- 
iots of God, ready at a word to reinforce 



THE REALITY OF THE TEMPTATION. 77 

Him ? Had He not more than twelve legions 
of angels at His back ? Did He not know- 
well that this was but a passing trial, an inci- 
dent of the journey, as He went on to certain 
victory and peace ? Yonder, across the nar- 
row desert, did not the hill of the transfigur- 
ation shine ? Whoever is sure that He will 
come safe out of the battle, may easily be 
brave. Was He not absolutely sure ? 

But read at the end how angels came and 
ministered unto Him. What does that mean ? 
Plainly, it means weariness, it means distress, 
it means wounds to be bound up, it means that 
though the victory is won the victor has 
gained it only by desperate contention. 

Jesus is God revealing Himself in man, not 
God disguised as man. The infinite God 
manifesting Himself in finite man, must of 
necessity subject Himself to human limita- 
tions. So He bears our sicknesses and carries 
our sorrows ; He becomes acquainted with 
grief; He subjects Himself to the reality of 
our temptations. God cannot reveal Himself 
in man on any easier conditions. God can put 
on humanity as a cloak, and go about our 
streets wearing it, and looking like a man, and 
in that form be superior to all our ills. But 
that is not what we mean when we say the 
Nicene Creed, We mean something far more 



78 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

mysterious, more intimate, more real than that. 
God was in Christ ; the Word became flesh ; 
the Eternal took on Him our human nature 
and became man. Of course, He was tempted. 
It was essential that He should be tempted. 
He could not have become man without it. 

Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the world by 
His temptation, as well as by His crucifixion. 
In the wilderness sin meets Him, as on the 
cross death meets Him ; and He suffers. He 
conquers, but He suffers. He bruises the ser- 
pent's head, but the serpent stings His heal. 
Thus it is that He can be touched with the 
feeling of our infirmities. He knows how it 
is. He knows by hard experience how bitter 
a thing it is to fight with the devil. He in 
whom we see God, sympathizes. He who will 
judge us tempted sinners, understands. 



THE UNBELIEF OF THOMAS. 

Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and 
put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand 
into His side, I will not believe. — John 20 : 25. 

That is what St. Thomas said on Easter 
Monday. 

The central truth of the Christian religion 
had to win its way against the opposition of 
doubt. Not Thomas only but all the apostles 
questioned and rejected it. When Jesus said 
to them that after being put to death He 
would rise again upon the third day, they list- 
ened with dull minds, hearing His words, — 
which were plain enough, — but not under- 
standing them. They asked each other pri- 
vately what this resurrection from the dead 
could mean, but they got no satisfying answer. 
So slight was the impression made by the 
words that they appear to have forgotten them 
altogether. When the women came hurrying 
from the empty tomb, declaring that they had 
seen a vision of angels assuring them that 
Christ was risen from the dead, the apostles 
gave no credence to the story, accounting it an 
idle tale. The gospel of the resurrection was 

79 



80 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

preached to them, and they all with one con- 
sent refused to hear it. 

You remember how Thomas persisted in his 
doubt. After all the others were convinced 
he still held back. Easter Day had been full 
of wonders. Jesus had appeared to Mary 
Magdalene, and to the little company of holy 
women ; He had manifested Himself to the two 
disciples who were walking home to Emmaus ; 
some time during the day, Peter had seen Him ; 
He had entered into the presence of the fright- 
ened disciples who were gathered that evening 
in the upper room and had made it plain by 
the sight of His nail-pierced hands and feet 
that it was indeed Himself. " But Thomas," 
we read, " Thomas, one of the twelve, called 
Didymus, was not with them when Jesus 
came." And he refused to be convinced. The 
whole apostolic company together could not 
persuade him. 

Then a week went by. The Sunday after 
Easter came. '^ And after eight days again 
His disciples were within, and Thomas was 
with them ; then came Jesus, the doors being 
shut, and stood in the midst, and said. Peace 
be unto you. Then saith He unto Thomas : 
Eeach hither thy JBnger and behold My hands, 
and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into 
My side, and be not faithless but believing." 



THE UNBELIEF OF THOMAS. 81 

But Thomas needs no test. The sight of the 
face of Christ suffices him. "And Thomas 
answered, My Lord and my God. Jesus saith 
unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen Me 
thou hast believed ; blessed are they that have 
not seen and yet have believed." 

This is the record of the unbelief of Thomas. 
I desire to emphasize especially these three 
sentences : " Except I shall see in His hands 
the print of the nails, I will not believe " ; that 
tells us that Thomas was an unbeliever : " And 
after eight days His disciples were within, and 
Thomas with them" ; that shows that in spite 
of his unbelief he continued in the apostolic 
company : "Thomas answered and said unto 
Him, My Lord and my God " ; thus was his 
unbelief changed into complete faith. The 
presence of the unbeliever, the conduct of the 
unbeliever, and the conversion of the unbe- 
liever, are the three matters upon which I 
purpose to comment. 

There was an unbeliever among the apos- 
tles : let us begin with that. Indeed, as I 
have reminded you, there were at one time 
among the eleven apostles as many as eleven 
unbelievers. Only one is now left ; but he is 
an unbeliever in good earnest. Listen to him. 
He will not say, " If I can but touch His nail- 
pierced hands, I will believe." That would 



82 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

mean that faith was at least possible. Thomas 
sees no possibility of faith. " I will never be- 
lieve," he says, " unless I can put my finger 
into the print of the nails." 

Part of the unbelief of Thomas was tem- 
peramental. It belonged to the nature of the 
man. He did not believe anything easily. 
He was not easily stimulated to hope, nor apt 
to console himself in trouble with the com- 
forting visions of a sanguine imagination. He 
had not the good gift of seeing the world on 
its bright side. Thomas was naturally a de- 
spondent person, quick to discover difficulty, 
slow to believe. Everything that we are told 
about him shows that. 

We are informed, for example, that when 
Jesus turned His face towards Bethany, propos- 
ing to visit the grave of Lazarus, Thomas was 
in despair. They had threatened in Judea to 
kill the Master if He dared to venture again 
within their borders, and He was now about to 
undertake that perilous journey. Thomas saw 
nothing but death ahead. At once his mind 
settled upon the worst. " Let us also go," 
he said, " that we may die with Him." He 
was a brave man, but he lacked hope. 

Again, at the last supper, during our Lord's 
long conversation with the apostles, it was 
Thomas who broke in as the Master said, 



THE UNBELIEF OF THOMAS. 83 

"Whither I go ye know and the way ye 
know," and " Thomas saith unto Him, Lord, 
we know not whither Thou goest, and how can 
we know the way ? " It was the same refusal 
to take things for granted, the same inability 
to believe that everything would somehow 
come out right, which he had shown before. 
Thomas looked into the future, and it was all 
black. He could see no " way " in it at all. 

The temperament of Thomas constitutes 
him an excellent witness of the resurrection. 
Let us have an unbeliever in the midst of that 
enthusiastic company of disciples, somebody 
with observant and critical eyes, with a prac- 
tical mind, not easily roused into belief, nat- 
urally incredulous, with an invincible convic- 
tion that dead people stay dead; give us a 
witness with a will of his own, whose judg- 
ment is not jostled out of its way by any 
crowd, however big, whose best friend cannot 
persuade him to believe what he does not 
actually and heartily believe, who resolutely re- 
fuses to credit what he has not seen with his 
own eyes. Here he is, in the person of Thomas. 

In the pictures and the statues he is seen, 
a man of sober features, with brows furrowed, 
pondering hard questions, looking down at a 
measuring rule which he is holding in his 
hands. 



84 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

See, now, how this unbeliever behaves him- 
self in the company of the faithful, and how 
they conduct themselves towards him, and 
how Christ treats him. So long as there is 
unbelief among men, it will be worth while 
to study this relationship of the skeptic to the 
saints. Thomas is not dead. He is alive to- 
day, multiplied by thousands. We are all of 
us acquainted with Thomas. What shall he 
have to do with us, and we with him ? 

If the good example of the old time is to be 
followed, Thomas will continue in our com- 
pany, and we will be glad to have him with 
us. His unbelief will not hinder his associa- 
tion with us, nor will our faith forbid him. 
Thomas did stay away once, and that time he 
missed something. The next Sunday he was 
in his place, and the revelation came to him. 

The best thing that Thomas can do to-day 
is to come to church. He does not believe 
the central truth of Christianity ; he is a 
heretic, he is a skeptic, he is an infidel, — but 
is he absolutely satisfied that he is right ? 
Has he got quite to the end of it, and made 
the supreme discovery? Is he entirely sure 
that the creed of the ages is a lie? Has he 
shut his mind against the entrance of any 
possible new light and truth ? Has he stopped 
thinking ? Is he serenely contented ? 



THE UNBELIEF OF THOMAS. 85 

A man who hears one side for six days, as 
some men do, ought to give the other side one 
day's hearing out of the seven. An honest 
man owes that to himself. 

It ought to be understood that the church is 
not an ecclesiastical club, within whose doors 
only they may come who are quite congenial 
with all the others. It ought to be understood 
that the act of attendance at the services of the 
church does not commit one to entire accord 
with the church in all respects. One may be 
attracted by its good works, and glad to take 
his share in them, without being in full sym- 
pathy with its creed. He be but a little way 
along in the Christian life, being conscious of se- 
rious defects of character, yet setting a worthy 
ideal before him, and earnestly desiring to 
attain it. He may be an honest seeker after 
truth, and in perfect fairness willing to hear 
what they have to say who hold that the 
truth of the ages, — the truth that heaven is 
open and God is near at hand, — ^is true in- 
deed. In any case, his place is in the church. 
If there is any truth beyond that which he 
has already, he will come to a knowledge of 
it, as Thomas did, by keeping in Christian 
company, by his presence in the Christian con- 
gregation. 

The lesson of that Sunday after Easter 



86 THE HUMAN NATURE OP THE SAINTS. 

needs to be learned by believers also. Thomas 
is a good example, but so also is Peter, so is 
John, and the rest of those whose faith was 
sound. Thomas did not stay aw^ay, and they 
did not wish him to stay away. Nobody cast 
curious and questioning eyes upon him, asking, 
" Why is this unbeliever among us ? " They 
made him welcome. This is worth thinking 
about. 

This lesson has often been lost sight of 
among Christians. Thomas has many times 
been turned out of doors, excommunicated, and 
worse things done to him. Doubt has been 
accounted a crime. It has been held in worse 
esteem than the breaking of the Ten Com- 
mandments. Prisons have been prepared for 
it, and stakes set up in market-places, and fires 
kindled. That was not the spirit of the 
apostolic company. Nor of Him who stood 
there in the midst of them holding out His 
hands to Thomas. Jesus loved that unbeliev- 
ing Thomas, as He loves all honest and earnest 
men everywhere. He had no wish to put him 
away. What He desired was to bring him 
nearer. He knew the love that Thomas had 
in his heart ; and the love even of a heretic is 
a hundred times better than the cold faith of 
an orthodox believer, — St. Paul being our 
witness. 



THE UNBELIEF OF THOMAS. 87 

There is no room for any question as to the 
attitude of Jesus Christ towards honest doubt. 
When He held out His hands to Thomas there 
in the upper room, He made that as clear as 
the shining light. 

At last, to unbelieving Thomas, in the 
apostles' company, came the revelation of the 
truth, and doubt was changed to faith. Down 
he fell upon his knees, crying, " My Lord and 
my God ! " That was faith, indeed. None of 
the others had said that. 

Sometimes the doubters make the best be- 
lievers. When they come into the light of 
faith they know how to appreciate it, after the 
darkness. They value it more highly than 
those w^ho have always lived in the light. 
There is a great deal of conventional believing. 
There are people who believe because they 
have never seriously considered the articles of 
the creed. They were taught the Christian 
religion, as they were taught the decent 
customs of Christian civilization, by their 
good parents. And they have gone on ever 
since, taking things for granted, asking no 
questions. There is an element of good in 
this. It is by no means to be expected that 
all Christians shall have a critical mind. It is 
not absolutely necessary to ask questions. 
Some of these contented people, however, 



88 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

are like persons who live all their lives in the 
presence of some majestic mountain, or beau- 
tiful valley, or sublime expanse of sea, and be- 
hold daily that which others come miles to see, — 
behold without any real recognition, missing 
the sight of God. It is sometimes not a bad 
thing to fall into the difficulties of doubt. It 
breaks up conventionality. It brings us face 
to face with life. When we get a good hold 
of the truth again, we value it, as shipwrecked 
people value dry land. 

Thomas cried, " My Lord and my God," 
when he saw Christ. What had converted 
Thomas ? Was it the test which he had pro- 
posed to himself? Did he put his finger into 
the print of the nails, and thrust his hand into 
the wounded side, and thus believe ? No ; 
Thomas looked into the face of Jesus, and was 
satisfied. He tried no tests; he asked no 
more than that. He saw Christ, and that was 
enough. 

We, too, may see Christ, and the sight of 
Him shall help us as it helped Thomas. He 
speaks still in the pages of the gospels. Every 
day He holds out His nail-pierced hands to us. 
We, too, may know Him ; and to know Him 
is to believe in Him ; and to believe in Him, 
to serve Him and to love Him is life eternal. 



BLIND BAETIM^US. 

And it came to pass that as He was come nigh unto Jericho, 
a certain blind man sat by the wayside begging. — Luke 18: 35. 

Baedeker's "Palestine" has no map of 
Jericho. The place has long since ceased to 
exist. Its walls lie flatter than they were ever 
laid by Joshua. It was there, however, plain 
enough when the matter happened of which I 
purpose to speak. The small child was mis- 
taken who imagined that Jericho was in 
heaven. It stood on solid earth ; as actual and 
homely and familiar as any common town 
with which we are acquainted. We sur- 
round it with a fictitious sacredness which 
makes the miraculous easy and natural. We 
read without hesitation that a blind man's 
eyes were opened in Jericho. If we were 
told that a similar healing had been enacted 
in Jersey City we would regard the tale with 
different feelings. But to the men of that 
time, Jericho was like Jersey Citj. It offered 
quite as unpromising a background for a 
miracle. 

Jericho lay in the Jordan valley. Up 
among the hills, at Jerusalem, the winds 



90 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

blew ; but it was very hot at Jericho. It is 
true, the place was called the City of Paltns ; 
but the palm is one of the least satisfactory of 
trees. Although it grows where there is great 
need of shade, it gives little: it is mostly 
stem. A single New England pine or oak is 
better than a grove of palms. So the sun 
blazed down on Jericho; and the earth was 
white, and most of the buildings were white, 
and altogether it was very trying to the eyes, 
and in consequence there were a great many 
blind men in that city. 

On the day when this wonder happened, 
one of these blind men was sitting in the main 
street by one of the city gates. It was in the 
morning, for w^e know what had occurred the 
night before ; and it was in the spring of the 
year, for the Passover was near at hand. Thus 
every sight was fair and sweet with the tender 
beauty of the early day and of the early 
season. And in the midst of it all the blind 
man sat as unaware of this revelation of God 
as were some of his dull neighbors who had 
eyes. 

From the fact that his father's name is 
mentioned — Bartim83us meaning ''the son of 
Tiraseus" — we may guess that he was a young 
man. We may also infer less certainly that he 
belonged to a respectable family : everybody 



BLIND BARTIM^US. 91 

knew his- father. One thing is plain, he was 
very poor. He sat by the wayside begging. 

It seems to us that the lot of a blind beggar 
must be very hard, but there are compen- 
sations. It is said of one of the wise men of 
Greece that he voluntarily put out both his 
eyes, and then saw twice as much as anybody 
else in that part of the country. That was 
because he was thereby freed from many petty 
distractions, and was able to concentrate his 
thoughts. As for being a beggar, some of the 
best men that ever lived have adopted that 
mode of life of their own free choice, and have 
delighted in it. Francis of Assisi did. He 
preferred to be poor. It was a state of blessed 
independence. People talk about being inde- 
pendently rich, but there is such a thing as 
being independentl}" poor. 

Thus the blind beggar was a more privi- 
leged person than one might naturally think ; 
he had both leisure and liberty. He had time 
to think, and he could think what thoughts he 
would. 

He had much to think about, that morning. 
The day before there had come into the town 
a person about whom everybody was talking. 
Our Lord was now approaching the end of His 
ministry, and, although each day brought Him 
an increase of enemies, all people were greatly 



92 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

interested in Him. When He came into the 
town, all the citizens were in the streets to see 
Him. That Avas yesterday afternoon. The 
whole roadway was crowded. Among the 
throng was the most unpopular man in Jericho. 
Almost everybody disliked Zaccheus ; partly, 
no doubt, because he was a tax-collector, but 
also, it is likely, because he was Zaccheus. 
This unpopular person, being short of stature, 
had climbed into a tree ; and our Lord, as He 
passed, had looked up and recognized him, and 
had said, " Come down, Zaccheus, I will dine 
to-day at your house." You can see how such 
a thing as that would set all men to talking. 

There were two parties, calling our Lord by 
different titles. Those who did not believe in 
Him called Him '' Jesus of Nazareth." Those 
who did, called Him "Jesus, the Son of 
David." The blind beggar, sitting by the 
wayside, was turning all this over in his mind. 

And now, on this spring morning, Bar- 
timaBus sat in the main street near the city 
gate, holding out his hand. And in the 
distance he heard a crowd coming; there were 
sounds of tongues and feet. On they came, 
filling the street from side to side. And the 
blind man did what any blind man would have 
done under like circumstances : he reached out 
his hand and grasped the coat of the nearest 



BLIND BARTIM^US. 93 

man, and said, " What does it mean ? What 
is it all about?" And the man answered, 
"Jesus of Nazareth passeth by." There He 
came along the road. Immediately, Bar- 
timaBus began to call as loud as he could, 
"Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on 
me ! Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on 
me!" 

This vras the voice of recognition. The 
blind man recognized the opportunity. There 
must have been twenty blind men in Jericho 
that day, and every one of them must have 
known that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. 
Nobody in the town could help knowing that. 
But not another one was healed. Yes ; some 
of the gospels say that there was one other, 
but no more than that. All the other blind 
men were blind when Jesus came, and just as 
blind when He went away. That was because 
they missed the opportunity. 

The difference between people, whereby 
some succeed and others fail, is due, of course, 
in a measure, to a difference of opportunity ; 
but still more to a difference in the recognition 
of opportunity. Here are two men in the same 
business ; one gets rich, while the other stays 
poor. The rich man may have had no more 
opportunity than the poor man ; but every 
opportunity that came, he recognized. 



94 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

Here are two men in the same class in col- 
lege. They have the same teachers, and may, 
if they will, have the same companions. These 
opportunities are equal. One man makes much 
of himself, and becomes an eminent citizen; 
the other lapses into ignominious obscurity. 
Here are two persons at the same service. 
One goes away blessed ; the other goes away 
bored. The service is the same, but the people 
are different ; and the difference is in the mat- 
ter of recognition. 

Every day, Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. 
In the street, in the schoolroom, in the office, 
as we read, as we walk, as we work, He comes, 
ready to bless us, if we will. Sometimes, w^e 
are like the two who went to Emmaus, who 
when He made as if He would go on, urged 
Him to come in. Or we are like this blind 
beggar, and appeal for help and blessing. 

The beggar's cry was also an utterance of 
faith. He not only recognized an opportunity, 
but he found the opportunity in the person of 
Jesus Christ. He was one of those who, not 
having seen, believed. 

His faith was most inadequate theologically. 
It was sufficient, however, religiously. It was 
enough to make him side with those who were 
the friends of Christ, and to call out to Him 
for help. He believed that Jesus Christ could 



BLIND BARTIM^US. 95 

help him. Presently, our Lord said, " Thy 
faith hath saved thee." We are accordingly 
assured that the blind man's faith was saving 
faith. The only kind of faith which deserves 
that adjective is religious faith. 

There is a great diiference between theolog- 
ical and religious orthodoxy. Theological 
orthodoxy is an external matter, and may not 
even suffice to make men respectable. It is a 
thing of the brain and of the lips, and may 
have no sort of relation to the heart or to the 
hands. Some of the most objectionable of 
men have been scrupulous in this recitation of 
accurate doctrinal formulas : and then they 
have gone out and broken the Ten Command- 
ments. 

The difference between theological and 
religious orthodoxy is like the difference be- 
tween botany and roses. Botany is about 
roses, giving them scientific names and en- 
abling us to take them to pieces understand- 
ingly. But roses are the roses themselves. 
Or it IS like the difference between grammar 
and conversation. Grammar is the science of 
speech. As we talk, the grammarian notices 
that we use nouns and adverbs, conjugations 
and declensions. Or it is like the difference 
between ''rhetoric," as it used to be called, 
and literature. The old rhetoric books took 



96 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

Shakespeare and Milton and called attention 
to their use of zeugma, and paraleipsis, and 
anacoluthon. Mr. Gardiner, in his " Forms of 
Prose Literature," quotes from a writer who 
tried to assist his readers to an appreciation of 
the Odes of Horace by showing how they 
illustrated "the synectic, in its threefold 
divisions of anastomosis, symptosis and pho- 
netic syzygy." Out of a thousand admirers 
of poetry, even of Latin poetry, not more than 
two would probably be able even to define 
these words. And yet the noble verse would 
be a delight and an inspiration to them all. 

So it is with faith. Formulas have but a 
remote connection with it. What is the faith 
which saves men ? It is that which makes the 
little child hold tight to his father's hand. 
You cannot define it. The theologians can no 
more define it than the chemists can analyze 
life. But you see what it is. It is that which 
makes a man appeal to Jesus Christ. When 
in the moment of temptation he turns to Him 
for strength, when in the hour of sorrow he 
turns to Him for comfort, when in the season 
of perplexity he turns to Him for truth, and 
takes His word, then his faith appears. It 
may be as full of error as the blind man's; 
but it saves him, nevertheless. 

Presently it appeared that the beggar's 



BLIND BAETIMJSUS. 97 

voice of recognitioii and of faith was also the 
voice of perseverance. Nobody could stop 
him. " Jesus, Thou Son of David," he cried, 
" have mercy on me." And this, not once nor 
twice, but many times. The street was full 
of noise, but his cry was heard above it all. 
Those who stood about him told him in the 
plainest Hebrew to hold his tongue ; it made 
no difference. Or rather, it increased his 
eagerness ; so much the more a great deal he 
continued to lift up his voice. All the distrac- 
tion, all the hindrance and obstruction, all the 
indifferent and impatient or hostile folk who 
crowded in between him and the Master, did 
but emphasize his purpose. 

Then Jesus heard the cry. He stopped, 
and had the man brought to Him. And the 
man cast away his long cloak, and came. It 
was very warm in Jericho in the middle of 
the day, but in the spring there was a chill in 
the morning air. A week after, in Jerusalem, 
there was a fire burning in the courtyard of 
the high priest's house, where Peter stood and 
warmed himself. So the beggar had a long 
cloak wrapped about him. Begging, even in 
warm weather, is a cold business. 

The blind man cast away his cloak and 
came. " What do you want ? " said the Mas- 
ter. " I want to see," said the man. 



98 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

Blessed is he who knows thus plainly what 
he wants. Bartitnaeus knew his defect dis- 
tinctly. One reason why we make such halt- 
ing and uncertain progress towards spiritual 
health is because we do not know what is the 
matter with us. We have a vague idea that 
we are not as good as we ought to be: we 
have various faults. But what we need to do 
is to take our imperfections one by one and 
definitely and patiently amend them. Let 
the others go : take one, and bring it to the 
Master, as the blind man brought his blind 
eyes. Thus shall w^e be helped. 

And Jesus touched him. He made the beg- 
gar see. That was a miracle. The name is 
appropriate : it means a wonderful thing, and 
this was a wonderful thing. So far, however, 
was it from being against nature, that it was 
the most natural of all events. One of the 
contributions of Christian Science to the Chris- 
tian religion is in the fact that it is impressing 
upon us the naturalness of the miraculous. 
Miracles are every-day occurrences. People 
are being healed, as this blind man w^as, with- 
out medicine, by the touch of a hand or by 
the tones of a voice, until we are coming to 
understand that it is all as harmonious with 
natural law as the action of medicine. The 
old notion that in a miracle God broke in 



BLIND BARTIM^US. 99 

upon the course of nature is no longer held by 
instructed and intelligent persons. God is in 
all nature. By His ordering there is a rela- 
tion not only between drugs and the body, 
but between the mind and the body. Jesus 
understood that relation, and acted upon it. 
Or rather, His personality coming in contact 
as here with physical weakness brought about 
an inevitable and natural result. He could 
not help opening the eyes of the blind. The 
blind man who recognized Him as He passed 
by, opened his own eyes. 

The miracles are recorded in the Bible not 
so much on account of their marvel, as on ac- 
count of their meaning. Of the many acts of 
healing which Jesus did, these are selected for 
their significance. What, then, does this mira- 
cle mean ? 

The man came blind, and went away blind 
no longer: the fact is significant spiritually. 
The man came a beggar, and went away a 
beggar no longer: the fact is significant so- 
cially. 

Take first the spiritual lesson. The man's 
eyes were opened. It is a symbol of our 
Lord's whole ministry : that is what He came 
to do. And that is what ^ve need. To see 
the difference between right and wrong, to 
see the way of duty, to see the subtle distinc- 



LofO, 



100 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

tions between truth and falsehood, to see our 
neighbor and ourself, and God — who is there 
that can do this clearly ? Even St. Paul had 
to say that we see now " through a glass, 
darkly.'^ Jesus Christ will give us sight. 
Many a man has come to Him blind, and has 
gone away with such a gift of sight as has re- 
vealed to him a new heaven and a new earth. 
Thenceforth the world has been a different 
world. It has happened again and again. It 
is one of the supreme miracles, ever so much 
more wonderful and effective than the cure of 
Bartimaeus. And we can verify it. There is 
no uncertainty about it. "We know men and 
women in our own circle of acquaintance who 
have been transformed by knowing Jesus 
Christ. To-day, for every one of us. He pass- 
eth by. He will open our eyes, if we wish it, 
as the blind man did. 

Take now the social lesson. This blind beg- 
gar is the symbol of a present problem, the 
problem of poverty. What shall we do for 
the poor? There were excellent people in 
Jericho who asked themselves that question, 
and answered it by a distribution of alms. 
As they passed along the street and saw Bar- 
timaeus, with his outstretched hat or hand, 
they put something into it. And the next 
day, they found the same beggar in the same 



BLIISTD BARTIM^US. 101 

position. So it went on. The poor were 
helped in their poverty, but they were not 
helped out of their poverty. Then the Master 
came, and when He helped the man, He left 
him a different man. He was a beggar no 
longer. For Jesus addressed Himself, not to 
the man's poverty, but to the cause of his pov- 
erty. Bartimaeus was a beggar because he 
was blind. Jesus opened his eyes. 

It is the new philanthropy. The new phi- 
lanthropists are trying not only to alleviate 
poverty, but to remove it. They are endeav- 
oring to understand it, to get at the causes of 
it, and to change the conditions. 

Then the blind man saw ; and the first thing 
that he saw was the way before his feet. On 
it led after Jesus Christ. The man went along 
that way. He followed Him. He took the 
gift which the Lord had given him, and used 
it in the Lord's service. 



THE MISSION OF PHILIP. 

Philip findeth Nathaniel. — John 1: 45. 

Thus the church begins. One man makes 
the supreme discovery and comes into ac- 
quaintance with Jesus of Nazareth, and 
straight he goes and tells his new truth to 
another. Bead the first chapters of the his- 
tory of the Christian Church as they are writ- 
ten at the beginning of the New Testament, 
and see how many times this incident is re- 
peated. It is characteristic of Christianity. 
It is the instinctive motion of the Christian. 
One finds another, and thus the kingdom of 
God comes. 

Ours is an aggressive religion. It is never 
contented. It stands by itself among the re- 
ligions of the race in its zeal for making con- 
verts. It will never stop till it has discovered 
every Nathaniel, and has brought him into 
the presence of Jesus. It will never be satis- 
fied until the whole race is Christian : nor will 
it be contented then, until every Christian is a 
good Christian. That will be a long time yet. 

This aggressive spirit is seen in every Chris- 
102 



THE MlSSlOlSr OF PHILIP. 103 

tian who has learned the mind of the Master, 
and has caught the deep meaning of His re- 
ligion, and is in spiritual sympathy with Him. 
The Christian does not imagine that his task 
is done when he has worked out his own 
salvation. He does not deceive himself by 
thinking that the chief purpose of his life is 
to work out his own salvation. He knows 
that salvation cannot be selfishly attained, 
that no man can be saved alone, and that we 
save ourselves by saving our brethren. He 
finds his best occupation in helping, uplifting, 
trying to save somebody else. It is what 
Jesus said: He who will save his life shall 
lose it ; he only w^ho is content to lose his 
life for Christ's sake and for the good of his 
neighbors, shall find it. We are good Chris- 
tians in proportion as we follow the example of 
that apostle who, having himself found Jesus, 
lost no time till he should bring his brother 
also. 

This aggressive spirit, this longing to go out 
and bring some brother in, marks not only the 
Christian but the earnest man of every creed, 
the world over. It fired the heart of a camel- 
driver in an Arabian desert, and made him the 
ambassador of God to a sixth part of the in- 
habitants of the planet. "Though the sun 
stand on my right hand and the moon on my 



104 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

left,'' said Mohammed, " and both command 
me to hold my peace, yet must I speak." 

It moved a German schoolmaster, so that 
he became a lever for overturning most of the 
established institutions of his day that they 
might be builded over again better. You 
know how stout he stood, that honest Luther ; 
nothing could shake him. '' God help me," 
he declared. "I can do no other, speak I 
must." All the priests and prelates, all the 
curses, civil and ecclesiastical, all the flames 
and fagots notwithstanding, yet must he 
utter forth in the hearing of all men the truth 
which God had given him. Though he were 
confronted by as many devils as there were 
tiles on all the roofs of all the cities of all 
Europe, yet must he defy the whole Satanic 
multitude and tell his errand. 

The aggressive spirit makes earnest men 
akin. The earnest man cannot be contented 
to be right all alone. He will have no 
monopoly of truth. He will not have his 
brain a prison but a treasure-house of knowl- 
edge. What he sees he would have the whole 
world see ; what he believes he would have 
the whole world believe. His desire is that 
of the apostle who stood before the king : "I 
would to God that not only thou, but also all 
that hear me this day were both almost and 



THE MISSIOiSr OF PHILIP. 105 

altogether such as I am, — except these bonds," 
St. Paul added ; and he adds the same, mean- 
ing his many limitations and shortcomings. 
The truth which he possesses, he would share 
with all ; his errors and faults he is sincerely 
sorry for, and so much the more as they hinder 
him from being helpful. 

It is interesting and instructive to observe 
how this aggressive spirit, which is a quality 
of greatness, marks in Holy Scripture even 
the humblest Christians. " The day following 
Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth 
Philip, and saith unto him. Follow me ; " and so 
Philip became a Christian. And what next ? 
"Philip findeth Nathaniel." He cannot rest 
till he has found his friend and brought him. 

It is the same in Samaria. "The woman 
saith unto Him, I know that Messias cometh, 
which is called Christ. Jesus saith unto her, 
I that speak unto thee am He." That was the 
plainest word which He had spoken of Him- 
self. To no one anywhere had He told that 
great truth so fully and distinctly, using no 
parable: I am the Christ. What does the 
woman do with this word from heaven ? 
"The woman left her water pot and went her 
way into the city, and saith unto the men. 
Come, see a man which told me all things that 
ever I did. Is not this the Christ ? " 



106 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

Always this word " Come." Come, cries 
Andrew to his brother Simon ; Come, cries 
Philip to Nathaniel ; Come, entreats this 
woman of Samaria, stopping every one whom 
she meets in the street. These people must 
speak ; they must get somebody else ; they 
must tell what great things Christ has done 
lor their souls. 

Jesus heals a demoniac in Gergesa : " And 
he went his way and published throughout the 
whole city how great things Jesus had done 
for him." Matthew leaves his custom-house 
and follows Jesus. He gives up a good busi- 
ness to enter into this new service. But this 
is not enough ; he must bring his companions, 
also. He makes a great supper, and gets all 
his publican partners and friends together to 
meet Him whom henceforth he purposes to 
follow. The authorities seize John and Peter, 
crying, you must speak no more in this name. 
If you do, we will put you into prison, and 
worse afterwards. But the apostles answer, 
" Whether it be right in the sight of God to 
hearken unto you more than unto God, judge 
ye ; for we cannot but speak the things which 
we have seen and heard." They simply could 
not help it. The great truth of the Christian 
creed had flashed in upon the souls of these 
men, and to keep silence about it was impos- 



THE MISSION OF PHILIP. 107 

sible. Better be put in prison a hundred 
times ; better die, first : rather than be still. 
St. Stephen died. They might stone him if 
he would, but while breath was in him, speak 
he must. 

This aggressive spirit, this impulse of the 
Christian Philip to find Nathaniel, this duty, 
desire, necessity of open testimony and per- 
sonal appeal, ought to characterize every 
Christian. Every Christian ought to be mak= 
ing somebody else Christian. 

It is easy enough to speak to people on the 
subject of religion, in the pulpit. They ex- 
pect it there. But to address our neighbors 
upon this matter in private conversation is one 
of the most difficult of occupations. 

One reason is that we dislike to make our- 
selves disagreeable. We are afraid that the 
subject may not be a pleasant one. And it is 
very true that Philip may make himself ex- 
ceedingly disagreeable. He may speak in an 
unnatural tone of voice, and in a constrained 
and singular manner, and in phrases which 
seem affected. He may simply annoy Na- 
thaniel, and do more harm than good to the 
cause which he represents. Few people are 
more uncomfortably disagreeable than the 
men and women who are piously disagreeable. 
They make even the saints lose their temper. 



108 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

There is no need, however, that the subject 
of personal religion should repel the listener. 
There is surely nothing in the theme itself 
which is distasteful. It is concerned with the 
highest, the most important, the most helpful 
truth in the world. If we choose fitting oc- 
casions and fitting people ; if we speak in a 
natural tone of voice, and behave like normal 
human beings, and if we do not preach any- 
thing which we are not ourselves honestly fol- 
lowing, we will not make ourselves disagree- 
able. 

In every friendship that is worth anything, 
whether between parent and child, or between 
friend and friend, the moment does come, — 
and not once or twice only, — when it is just 
the time for a spiritual word. Be on the 
watch for that moment, and then speak. 
Have the aggressive spirit in your heart, be 
possessed with the sense of responsibility for 
your Christian influence, seek every good op- 
portunity to make somebody else as good a 
Christian as you are yourself, and you will 
find Nathaniel. Who can measure the value 
of open, earnest, manly Christian speech ? 
Sometimes a word has changed the whole cur- 
rent of a life. Your words, just because you 
speak them, will be more effective than a great 
many sermons. What you say may not be 



THE MISSION OF PHILIP. 109 

eloquent, nor logical nor in all respects accu- 
rate; you may blunder in saying it; but what 
your friend will hear will be the voice of your 
heart. 

I suppose that the real difficulty is our con- 
sciousness of our own imperfections. Who 
are we that we should go to another, saying 
by the fact of our addressing him that we are 
better than he is, and urging him to the spir- 
itual life ? And if we go, how shall we begin 
to speak ? And if our friend asks questions 
or makes comments, how shall we answer 
him? 

Let us consider what it is that we desire to 
do. We may put it into a single sentence : 
We desire to bring our friend to the knowl- 
edge, and thus to the love, and so to the al- 
legiance of Jesus Christ. What will bring 
that about ? Our own example will do a great 
deal. The fact that we are manifestly devoted 
to Jesus Christ, that we are not only regular in 
our attendence upon those services in which 
we are brought near to Him, but are glad to 
go and honestly regret to stay away, that the 
will of Jesus Christ affects our will, — all this 
is of aggressive value. Though we do not say 
a word, it helps. Christianity on Sunday, 
with a lack of Christianity between Sundays, 
does not help. Devotion to the church, ac- 



110 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

companied by selfishness at home, does not 
help. If we so live as to make it plain to 
those who know us that Jesus Christ is an ever- 
present strength and joy to us ; if they see 
that He makes us considerate of others, cheer- 
ful under trials, patient in afl3.iction, self-sac- 
rificing, and having the spirit of service, — that 
helps immeasurably. 

To bring our friend where he will hear 
about Jesus Christ is a way to effect our 
desire for him. We may not be able to say 
the word which we want to say ; but in the 
church, where the scriptures are read and the 
gospel is preached, he may hear the word 
which he needs. If it were an appreciation 
for music which we wished to cultivate in him, 
we probably would not argue with him about 
the excellence of the works of the masters, we 
Avould take him to concerts, to as many concerts 
as we could get him to attend cheerfully. We 
would not urge him against his will, but we 
would very persistently invite him. We would 
not expect much at the beginning : he would 
probably say a great many times that he would 
never go again, and would revile music on 
general principles, but he would go if we kept 
after him, and by and by he would hear with 
his ears, and rejoice with his heart, and be 
converted musically. That is the right thing 



THE MISSION OF PHILIP. Ill 

to do with the friend whom we would bring 
to an appreciation of religion. We will bring 
him at least to the service. He ought never 
to be compelled to come in, but the Christian 
in the house ought never to go to church on 
Sunday without inviting the member of the 
family w^ho does not commonly go. That un- 
wearying, cheerful invitation will accomplish 
much. 

That is what Philip did. He did not know 
much about Jesus Christ himself, he had been 
acquainted with Him only for one day ; and 
when Nathaniel, having listened to what he 
had to say about Him, offered an objection — 
can any good thing come out of Nazareth ? — he 
had no argument or proof to give in answer. 
What he said was, Come and see. Only 
come, he said, look into His face, hear Him 
speak, get acquainted with Him, and then 
make up your own mind. That was no argu- 
ment ; but it was more effective than a whole 
encyclopaedia of arguments. Nathaniel did 
come and see, and thus another disciple was 
added to the company of Jesus. 



THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 

There is one article of the Apostles' Creed 
whose intention is unknown. Nobody can tell 
how it got into the creed ; and, being there, 
nobody can say what it originally meant. We 
recite it over and over, without denial, even 
without question, but, I will venture to say, 
without understanding. 

Of course, the creed from beginning to end 
is concerned with high matters of whose full 
significance we are all ignorant. A formula 
whose first word is an assertion of belief in 
God, and which goes on through the mysteries 
of redemption to the life everlasting, presents 
not only a series of the articles of our belief, 
but an outline of a course of study which will 
be suflBcient to occupy us to all eternity. But 
in the case of the article which I now purpose 
to consider the very subject of our study is 
uncertain. Not only the meaning but the in- 
tention of the sentence is unknown. I refer 
to the words in which we express our belief 
in the communion of saints. What is the 
communion of saints ? 

The Apostles' Creed, substantially in its 

112 



THE COMMUKION OF SAINTS. 113 

present form, was in existence at least as early 
as the latter part of the second century. It 
appears at that date in the writings of Tertul- 
lian, who lived in the north of Africa, and of 
Irenseus, who lived in the south of France. It 
is the creed of the church of the West, as the 
Nicene formula is the creed of the church of 
the East. Neither Tertullian nor Irenaeus, 
however, include in their statement of belief 
any such article as the communion of saints. 
The first appearance of these words is more 
than two hundred years later, in the beginning 
of the fifth century. That is, for two hun= 
dred years the service of the church contained 
no creed at all. The emphasis in that period 
was not on belief but on behavior. And after 
that, for two hundred years more, the creed 
made no reference to the saints. Indeed, the 
assertion of the communion of saints is not 
made to-day in any part of Eastern Christen- 
dom. The Greek Church says the Nicene 
Creed, in which this phrase does not occur. 

In the fifth century, then, and in Gaul,~or 
as we now say, France, — the words were 
added. The creed had not yet been stereo- 
typed. The churches were not particular to 
recite it always in precisely the same form. 
If they got the general sense of it, that was 
enough. So that addition and subtraction 



114 THE HUMAIS^ NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

were both easy, and both were taking place. 
One day it occurred to somebod}^ to follow 
the phrase, " the holy catholic church," with 
the further phrase, " the communion of saints." 
And the congregation liked it, and wanted it 
said again that way next Sunday, and then 
the neighbors heard about it, and then Nicetas 
of Aquileia put it in a book. Thus, with 
general approval, but without any formal 
action, it found a place in the creed. 

JSTow in the early part of the fifth century 
the words sanctorum communionem had two 
meanings, according as sanctorum was taken 
to be a neuter or a masculine noun. The 
words might signify a participation either in 
holy things or in holy people. The holy things 
were the sacraments ; the holy people were the 
saints, especially the saints above in the jo}^ of 
heaven. In either case, the reference was to 
the church, for the new phrase was not con- 
sidered as a new article of faith. You will 
notice in the creed, as it is printed in the 
Prayer-book, that the articles are separated 
one from another by a colon, but that the 
mark between ''the holj^ catholic church " and 
"the communion of saints" is a semicolon. 
These two make a single article. The com- 
munion of saints is set in the creed not by way 
of addition but by way of explanation. So 



THE COMMU^^ION OF SAINTS. 115 

that as the Apostles' Creed now stands three 
assertions are made about the church : it is 
holy, it is catholic, and it is the communion of 
saints. It is impossible, however, to decide 
what was in the minds of the good men who 
first used the new words. They may have been 
thinking of sacraments, or they may have 
been thinking of saints, or they may have 
been thinking of both together. What is the 
peculiar privilege of members of the holy 
catholic church, according to the Apostles' 
Creed ? Is it that they are permitted to 
receive the sacraments of grace ? is it that 
hereafter they will be admitted with all the 
blessed saints into glory everlasting ? or is it 
one joy in the present and the other joy in the 
future ? Nobody can tell. 

Why should we care ? These are both 
narrow meanings. Neither of them satisfies 
us. They are not only narrow, but they repre- 
sent the faults rather than the virtues of the 
holy catholic church. 

It is true that in the church we are privi- 
leged to participate in the sacraments. We 
are admitted to the table of the Lord, that He 
may dwell in us and we in Him. And that is 
indeed a blessing. But the blessing is not in 
the act itself : it is in the presence of Him who 
therein blesses us, and in the new spirit with 



116 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

which we come out to take up the old life. 
The church has asserted an exclusive pos- 
session of the sources of spiritual life. It has 
maintained that without the sacraments there 
is no salvation ; and it has claimed to be the 
sole dispenser of the sacraments. For hun- 
dreds of years it successfully preserved a 
monopoly of the necessities of the Christian 
life. It grew rich by selling the sacraments. 
And it treated its competitors in a manner 
which no monopoly to-day would dare to 
imitate afar off. It controlled legislation, and 
carried on an unceasing and unswerving per- 
secution. It killed its rivals. The more 
formidable among them it burned at the 
stake. And this it did as the communion of 
saints ; that is, as the society whose members 
were admitted to a participation of holy 
things. 

It is true also that the church is not divided 
by the barrier of death. Part of it is here on 
earth ; part of it is in paradise ; but it is all one 
church. On we go out of the material sanc- 
tuary into the spiritual, expecting to continue 
there the prayers, the praises, and the religious 
joys which we have begun here. "We antici- 
pate with confidence a day when we shall 
enter into fellowship with the saints. The 
time will come when we shall know the men 



THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. IIY 

and women whose books we have read for our 
souls' good, whose lives have entered into our 
life, and whose very names make our hearts 
warm. What a blessed thing it will be to 
have our residence in a place where there will 
be no clocks or almanacs, where nobody will 
ever be in a hurry, where there will be ever so 
many more than seven days in a week. There 
we may converse with St. Augustine without a 
fear lest we may be keeping him from his 
studies ; and with St. Francis, without taking 
his time from his prayers. There we will be 
free from all appointments, emancipated from 
the bondage of time. And we anticipate a 
dearer companionship — the blessed, familiar 
fraternity of our personal friends, whom we 
shall meet again after long parting, in the 
light across which falls no shadow of death. 
All this is precious to our souls. But the place 
for it in the creed is in " the life everlasting.'' 
The trouble with this interpretation of the 
communion of saints as a definition of the 
church is that it puts the emphasis too much 
upon the other world. It encourages that 
misplaced patience which endures the ills of 
this present life in the hope of a better life to 
come. These ills are not to be endured : they 
are to be amended. The Christian virtue 
which is needed in their presence is not 



118 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

patience ; it is righteous indignation, and a 
militant spirit, and an earnest purpose. Here, 
for example, is a great church in the midst of 
a sordid town, and priests and people are dail}^ 
saying their prayers in it, and singing hymns 
about the world to come, and all the time the 
town lies still in wickedness. That means a 
wrong idea of the relation between prayer and 
progress. It means a false conception of the 
mission of the Christian Church. 

These two meanings of the communion of 
saints were current in the thought of the fifth 
century when the words were added to the 
creed. Sometimes the phrase meant a par- 
ticipation in holy things, that is, the sacra- 
ments; sometimes it meant a fellowship with 
holy persons, that is, with the saints in the 
world to come. 

But we are not shut up to these ancient 
meanings. When we have determined pre- 
cisely what was in the mind of the maker of a 
sentence of the creed, we are not obliged to read 
the sentence just as he read it, if we can read 
it better. Because he meant a narrow thing 
by it in the fifth century, w^e need not neces- 
sarily mean the same narrow thing in the 
twentieth century. Else the creed becomes a 
barrier and blocks the way. The process of 
interpretation is attended with peril : that is 



THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 119 

true. It is not to be entered into unadvisedly 
or lightly. But it must be undertaken ; other- 
wise one of two results will follow : the for- 
mula must be abandoned, or we must compel 
ourselves to think a lie. The right thing to 
do, if we can, is to keep the formula, which is 
both venerable and precious and consecrated 
by the daily use of long generations of holy 
people ; but to keep it close to all the truth 
which the Holy Spirit has taught the church 
in all the ages since. 

Thus we must deal with the communion of 
saints. It is a noble phrase, and is capable of 
noble meanings. And these meanings are at 
the heart of the definitions of the fathers ; so 
that they spoke more truly than they knew. 

The church is indeed a fellowship with holy 
people, as they said, but the holy people are 
here in the flesh on earth. The communion 
of saints is the Christian brotherhood, the as- 
sociation of those who are trying to be good ; 
the Gemeinde der Heiligen^ as Luther said. 
The grammarians warn us that the words 
sanctorum communionem cannot be so trans- 
lated. But that does not deter us for a 
moment. They must be so translated. That 
is what they actually mean to-day. 

The church is a holy church: that is, in pur- 
pose, in ideal. The people who belong to it 



120 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

are called saints. No matter who they are, 
they are entitled saints. That is the synonym 
of a Christian in St. Paul's epistles. The 
saints may not have gone very far along the 
narrow way to sanctity. But they are called 
saints, because they have their faces turned in 
that direction. St. Paul addresses a letter "to 
the saints which are in Ephesus," and in the 
course of it he tells them that they must stop 
their lying and their stealing. These people 
were only beginning to be saints, and had not 
got far enough along to have mastered even 
the most elementary of the Ten Command- 
ments. They were not altogether respectable, 
but they were saints : saints for the sake of 
their good intentions, saints because of their 
honest purpose, called saints already in antici- 
pation of the time when they should be saints 
indeed. 

And these imperfect persons, who were thus 
striving after a better life, were not striving all 
alone. They were members of a society ; they 
belonged to a brotherhood. They were help- 
ing one another, coming together to the sacra- 
ment of spiritual strength, and going out 
together to undertake the tasks which were too 
heavy for one pair of hands. What is the 
meaning of the rubric which forbids the cele- 
bration of the holy communion unless there 



THE COMMUlSriON OF SAINTS. 121 

are at least two people to communicate with 
the minister ? It is intended to preserve the 
social aspects of the sacrament, as the service 
not of an individual only but of a group of 
people, of the Christian brotherhood. 

Thus it was that the Christian Church came 
into being, as the fellowship of the faithful, as 
the society of friends, as the communion of 
saints. The creed says that the church is 
holy ; that is, that the supreme purpose of it 
is the upbuilding of character. And then it 
adds that it is the communion of saints ; that 
is, that one of the distinctive marks of Christian 
character is brotherliness. The church is the 
Christian brotherhood. It is the blessed com- 
pany of these who in the name of Christ are 
trying to establish the kingdom of heaven in 
the world by being brotherly. 

The church means also, as they said of old, 
a participation in holy things. It is the con- 
fraternity of the sacraments. It is the open 
gate of heaven. The ancient definition needs 
only to be filled with brotherly love. It needs 
the spirit of that great-minded leader of the 
people to whom they complained that certain 
men in the camp, outside the chosen company, 
were speaking in the name of God, and who 
answered, " Would God that all the Lord's peo- 
ple were prophets." Would God that all the 



122 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

Lord's people, whether in the ancient organiza- 
tion of the church or out of it, stood in 
heaven's gate. If in the barest meeting- 
house, in the midst of the strangest eccentrici- 
ties of faith and worship, hopelessly removed, 
as it seems to us, from all which we call " the 
church," — if under these unpromising con- 
ditions, God is present, heaven's gate is open, 
and souls are blessed, then God be praised. 

Here is a church out of which men and 
women are seen coming with a new light in 
their faces. They have been in the presence 
of the Eternal ; they have joined their voices 
with angels and archangels and with all the 
company of heaven ; they have stood with the 
enrapt apostles upon the summit of the trans- 
figuration hill. And like the apostles, refreshed 
and strengthened, they come to undertake 
again the common task. That is a true 
church. There the people who are trying to 
be saints are fed with food from heaven. 

It is a great thing for a church to minister 
to all the needs of the neighborhood, and thus 
to maintain an endless round of guilds and 
clubs and schools. But the essential work of 
a church is to open heaven's gate, to be the 
place where tired people shall find rest, and 
the discouraged shall find confidence, and the 
disconsolate shall find comfort, where the per- 



THE COMMUKION OF SAINTS. 123 

plexed shall be directed, and the strong shall 
consecrate their strength. There, as of old, 
shall the angels of God be seen ascending and 
descending, going up the celestial stairway 
with their arras full of prayers, and coming 
down with their arms full of blessings. 

That is what we need. Busy as we are with 
the exterior details of things, occupied of ne- 
cessity with matters material and temporary, 
ministering to the minds and bodies of our 
neighbors, we need to realize how all this is 
but the lower part of an infinite activity whose 
higher part is in the heavens. The Father 
w^orks, as our Lord said, and we work, and are 
fellow-laborers with God. We must see life as 
a whole in order to get that ennobling and in- 
vigorating understanding of it. We must come 
away sometimes from the tumult and turmoil 
of it all, and get into the serene company of 
the saints. Thus shall we appreciate the rela- 
tion of the present moment to the eternal 
future, and of earth to heaven. In the early 
church, they used to tell people to bless their 
eyes with the bread and wine of the Lord's 
Supper ; that is, to touch their fingers to their 
lips after they had partaken of the holy things, 
and make the sign of the cross before their eyes. 
It was the symbol of that new sight, with 
which they who have seen heaven open look 



124 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

about thereafter in the earth. It was an ex- 
pression of the blessing of the communion of 
saints. 

This, then, is what those words mean in 
the creed. To the men of the fifth century, 
who wrote them there, they meant either a 
participation in holy things, or a fellowship 
with holy persons: they meant either sacra- 
ments or saints. But the sacraments were 
thought of as an exclusive possession, and the 
saints were all in heaven. To us of the 
twentieth century, the words mean more than 
that. They define the Christian Church as 
the place of brotherhood and of benediction. 
Here we meet the living saints ; here day by 
day we kneel at heaven's gate. 



THE EELIGION OF A CHEISTIAN. 

Unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. — 
Eph. 4 : 13. 

This is the formula of the religion of a 
Christian. All our best belief and all our best 
behavior is included in it. Everything is here 
which is needed both for the instruction and 
for the inspiration of a good life. The heart 
of the Christian religion is the Lord Jesus 
Christ ; and more and more to grow unto the 
measure of the stature of His goodness is the 
height of the aspiration of the saints. That is 
what we all want : that we may be like Him. 

I have especially in mind the act of con- 
firmation. A company of young people, most 
of them your sons and daughters, will present 
themselves before the bishop in your presence 
and in the sight of God, and will thus openly 
declare their purpose to live according to the 
religion of a Christian. They have outgrown 
the years of their childhood. They have come 
to the time of serious thought, when God and 
the world and they themselves are subjects of 
reflection. They are perceiving with a new 
clearness the everlasting difference between 

125 



126 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

right and wrong. They are meeting new 
temptations in a new way. They are making 
new resolutions. Having lived thus far in a 
natural state of dependence and subordination, 
where the sum of all duty was to do what they 
were told to do, they are entering now into a 
more individual life, where they will be ex- 
pected to look after themselves, to make their 
own rules, and to live their own lives. 

Our hearts go out to these young men 
and women, in deep sympathy and hope and 
longing. We trust that they are coming to 
confirmation, not in any dull, conventional 
way, — because they are of the usual age, or 
because of our desire, or because of the ex- 
ample of their companions, — but with a high 
resolve, saying daily to God in their prayers, 
'' O God, I give myself to Thee ; to Thee,— 
body, mind and soul, — I consecrate myself ; O 
God, forgive my sins, help me to be better; 
help me to be a Christian." 

Confirmation is only a beginning. It has, 
indeed, a certain value of its own. It is a 
prayer and a blessing. They who are con- 
firmed will kneel in the chancel, while the 
bishop, putting his hands upon their heads 
prays that God will help them to be good men 
and women ; and that is much. But to be 
good men and women is the chief thing. That 



THE EELIGIOK OF A CHRISTIAN. 127 

is what it is all for. As the words are spoken, — 
the words of those who come to be confirmed, 
promising that they will do the thing that 
is right as well as they can all their lives long, 
and the words of the bishop beseeching grace 
from God that they may keep the promise, — 
our thoughts are busy with the future. We 
are wondering what it will come to in actual 
fulfilment, how the great promise will be 
kept, what it will mean in a year, in five 
years, to those who are now, with full hearts, 
making it. Will they be devout and faithful 
and earnest members of the church? Will 
they be found in their places Sunday after 
Sunday, coming because they are glad to 
come? Will they be regular and reverent 
partakers of the Supper of the Lord ? and as 
the fruit of it all will they be good, between 
Sundays, in our sight who watch them with 
affection and anxiety, and in God's sight, unto 
whom all hearts are open, all desires known 
and from whom no secrets are hid ? Will they 
grow up good ? That is what we will be ask- 
ing of God and of our own hearts during the 
confirmation service. Will they approach 
more and more unto the measure of the stature 
of the fulness of Christ ? 

For to be good is the beginning and the 
middle and the end of the religion of a Chris- 



128 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

tian. The organization of religion into a 
church is of importance ; the formulation of 
religion into a creed is of importance ; and it 
is well to be interested, if one's mind inclines 
that way, in the questions of philosophy and 
of administration which arise from the en- 
deavor after the best possible organization of 
Christian people and the best possible formu- 
lation of Christian doctrine. But there is only 
one thing which is absolutely needful, and that 
is character. The supreme thing is character. 
There is so little in the gospels about either 
the creed or the church that it takes a com- 
mentator with a strong microscope to discover 
it : but the whole New Testament is a book of 
good living ; its message is one of righteous- 
ness; the chief concern is character. So the 
young man comes to the Master running, and 
kneels down before Him. "What good thing 
shall I do," he cries, " that I may have eternal 
life ? " He is the type and prophecy of ear- 
nest youth coming to confirmation. His heart 
is filled with fine enthusiasm; he desires to 
make the most of himself ; he looks ahead 
along the way of his life asking to be guided 
aright. And you remember what the Master 
says in answer : " If thou wilt enter into life, 
keep the commandments." Keep the com- 
mandments! The old, ten, plain, familiar 



THE EELIGION OF A CHRISTIAN. 129 

statements of the moral law. Do right; be 
good ; so shalt thou be saved. 

We all know from our own experience that 
youth goes on into maturity upon a road beset 
with ambuscades. On all sides is temptation. 
So diflBcult is the journey that few of us 
would be willing to go back and try it over 
again. We confess, indeed, that we have not 
made a great success of living: God knows 
that we are none of us so good as our neigh- 
bors think we are. Nevertheless, we are pro- 
foundly grateful that we have got through 
even so indifferently well as we have, and we 
would not venture it again lest we should fare 
worse. So that we look at these beginners, 
starting out over the hard way of life, and 
there are tears in our eyes, of affection and of 
apprehension. We say to them, as the lesson 
which our years have taught us, that it is im- 
possible to be good without trying, and trying 
continually, and trying hard. Now that they 
come by confirmation into full membership 
with us in this Christian society, we counsel 
them to consider the situation with great 
seriousness. Let them not enter lightly or un- 
advisedly into this high estate. 

The first resolution in the rule of life of a 
Christian is to be honest. I mean an honesty 
which is not determined by the law, and which 



130 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

has no relation to the probability of being 
found out, but which is maintained for its own 
sake in the sight of God. Such a sense of 
honesty will forbid a Christian to take any- 
thing which is not his own. The catechism 
mentions "picking" as well as stealing, 
thereby applying the commandment to the 
smallest matters. Indeed, it is a familiar fact 
of human nature that dishonesty begins small. 
The man who steals, so that the police get 
after him, had at first only a notion that to 
take somebody else's property did not matter, 
so long as the thing taken was worth little. 
Thus his sense of honesty became confused 
and weakened, and by and by when a strong 
temptation came, he fell into gross sin. 1 
have in mind here the dangers of respectable 
life, and the cases of good men who have gone 
wrong. The only safety is to be unfailingly 
scrupulous, to be immaculately honest in the 
very least things. 

This applies also to the taking of advantage 
of other people, by reason of their ignorance, 
or indifference or incompetence. It means 
every variety of cheating. It enforces a per- 
fect fairness which will govern the playing of 
a game as well as the making of a bargain. 
It determines the transaction of all business. 
I do not need to tell you that in the commer- 



THE RELIGION OF A CHRISTIAN. 131 

cial world the fact that a man is a member of 
the church is not taken as an assurance that he 
is honest. It ought to mean honesty, but the 
truth is that deceit and fraud have ever been 
besetting sins of religious people. The Phari- 
sees devoured widows' houses, and for a pre- 
tense made long prayers. We ought to face 
that possibility. We ought to recognize that 
temptation. The good Christian will resolve 
to be even foolishly fair in all his dealings 
with his neighbors. 

The second resolution in the Christian rule 
of life is to be clean-minded. The good Chris- 
tian is as particular about his mind as he is 
about his face and hands. You know what I 
mean : I do not need to go into details. 

St. Paul speaks of offenses of the lips, re- 
ferring especially to such as contradict the 
Christian principle of purity. He says that 
there is a kind of " foolish talking and jest- 
ing," which is not " convenient " ; that is, not 
becoming, not consistent with the character of 
a Christian. Our Lord speaks of offenses of 
the eyes. If thine eye offend thee, — that is, 
if the eye be an open gate of attack on true 
living, if temptation comes that way, — pluck it 
out. The meaning is that we are to deal very 
severely with ourselves. The Puritans did 
that. They shut their eyes to works of art 



132 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

which they found to be perilous to their souls. 
They set themselves stoutly against novels and 
plays which in their judgment were in opposi- 
tion to the life of the spirit. We say that 
they went too far; and no doubt they did, 
sometimes. But if they made mistakes, they 
made them on the safe side. They were 
dreadfully afraid of doing wrong. And 
therein, let us be as like them as we can. 
Is the picture, or the book, or the play good 
for the soul ? Are we better by reason of it, 
or worse ? Does it help or does it hinder the 
progress of our life towards the measure of the 
stature of the fulness of Christ ? Would He 
like it? He who sees the heart, would He 
approve ? These are questions which we 
may properly hesitate to answer for anybody 
else ; but we have got to answer them for our 
own selves. If the thing is against your best 
nature, stop it. N^o matter though all the 
arguments of grace and beauty, of art and 
letters, and of polite society, be for it, turn 
you away, for the safety of your soul. Emer- 
son said of a famous book that he was not 
good enough to read it ; as one might say of 
a lovely landscape in a malarious country, " I 
am not strong enough to stand there and en- 
joy it." 

The initial thing is the clean mind. All 



THE RELIGION OF A CHRISTIA1S-. 133 

hideous sins which ruin human life have their 
beginnings in a thought of evil which seemed 
foolish rather than wrong. That thought 
grew into another that was worse, and that 
into a word, and the word into an act, and the 
act into the perdition of the man. The thing 
to do is to guard the mind as we guard the 
lips, and to be as resolute against thinking 
evil as we are against speaking it aloud. " As 
a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." " What- 
soever things are true, whatsoever things are 
honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever 
things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, 
whatsoever things are of good report ; if there 
be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think 
on these things." 

The third resolution in the Christian rule of 
living is to heed the voice of conscience. Con- 
science is the voice whereby God speaks in 
our hearts. You know that you ought to do 
this or that : you have a feeling which impels 
you to it : then God speaks to direct you. 
You know that you ought not to do this or 
that ; as you turn your face or your mind in 
that direction you have an uneasy sense of 
transgression : then God is telling you that it 
is wrong. The good Christian is very sensi- 
tive to this inner voice, and very obedient to 
it. He has a quick perception of the differ- 



134 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

ence between good and evil. There are many 
things which he will not do, some of which 
seem innocent enough, because he knows that 
he ought not. " I ought not," he says ; re- 
peating aloud what God has said to him in the 
silence of his soul. " I ought not to do that 
because it is wrong." We want men and 
women, and boys and girls, in the Christian 
church who have very clear and strong con- 
victions concerning sin. 

Many of those who come to be confirmed 
have thus far depended largely upon the con- 
victions of their elders. They have kept from 
evil not so much because it is wrong as be- 
cause it is forbidden. The time comes now 
when they must face life for themselves. 
They must make their own decisions. They 
must say " ]^o " at the bidding of their own 
conscience. 

This is immeasurably important, but it is 
all negative. We expect more than that. 
The conscientious person has what is called a 
sense of duty. He is governed in what he says 
and does not by convenience, not by pleasure 
only, not by the current opinion of his class, 
but by his perception of the will of God. He 
asks, as Paul asked on the Damascus road, 
" Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do ? " He 
has a great desire to please God. So the 



THE RELIGION OF A CHRISTIAN. 135 

alternatives come, and he decides them one 
way or the other, by their relation to the mind 
of God. Every day he says, " I don't want to 
do this ; but I will, because God wishes me to 
do it." That is Avhat we mean by strength of 
character. The strong man is ruled by his 
ideals, by his convictions; by his high pur- 
pose, with all his might, under all conditions, 
to obey God. 

The fourth resolution which enters into the 
religion of a Christian is a determination to 
increase the happiness of life. I mean that 
the good Christian will not be content with 
the development of his own character: he will 
be occupied not only with the endeavor to be 
good, but with the endeavor to do good. He 
will minister to others. This is plainly what 
Jesus Christ did, who came not to be minis- 
tered unto but to minister. He gave even 
His life for the general good. Nobody is ap- 
proaching unto the measure of His stature 
who is not in some way doing that sort of 
thing. 

That means, at the least, the exercise of 
constant politeness and courtesy and sincere 
consideration for other people's feelings. It 
restrains the Christian from adding to that 
heavy burden of unhappiness which is all of 
human making. It forbids the saying of any 



136 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

word or the doing of any act which will make 
life harder for anybody else. It forbids 
frowns and pride and ridicule, and every look 
that hurts. It controls the temper. 

That is the least of it. It means also a con- 
stant watchfulness for opportunities of service. 
It impels to such behavior as will manifest 
affection, regard for weakness and age, chiv- 
alry, and every form of common usefulness. 
It sends young people into society not only to 
get what happiness they can for themselves, 
but to contribute to the general joy. What 
can I do to help my neighbor ? What use 
can I make of myself and of my privileges 
and possessions whereby the pleasure of the 
occasion shall be shared by those who are 
least likely to enjoy it ? These are Christian 
questions, and enter vitally into the religion 
of a Christian. I am not sure that our Lord's 
suggestions about dinner-parties can be fol- 
lowed literally in the complex society in which 
we live : the guests and the host might be 
alike uncomfortable. But the social principle 
which He there laid down is universal and 
eternal. Do not be content to entertain those 
only who will in return entertain you. Be 
kind and courteous and thoughtful without 
expectation of return, that you may thus in- 
crease the common stock of joy. Every day 



THE RELIGION OF A CHRISTIAlSr. 137 

be as happy as you possibly can, and try to 
make others happy. 

All this has its immediate application in the 
home, where religion is most stoutly tested, 
and where the grace of helpfulness has con- 
tinual opportunity. What kind of a home is 
it, so far as you are concerned? With what 
voice, with what face, with what degree of 
selfishness or of unselfishness, do you meet its 
daily duties ? You see that confirmation and 
church membership are very practical matters. 
They have to do with the homeliest concerns 
of the household. They summon those who 
enter into them to ask themselves various ques- 
tions. What does my presence in my home 
mean ? When I open the door do I add to 
the anxieties or to the pleasures of the 
family ? 

These four resolutions— to be honest, to be 
clean=minded, to heed the voice of conscience, 
and to increase the general happiness,=--are re- 
lated to the religion of a Christian as the 
foundation is related to the house. They lie 
deep in the ground. They are not the only 
stones in that wall : 1 have chosen them out of 
many others, not because they are suflScient of 
themselves to uphold the structure of a Chris- 
tian life, but because they lie so close at hand, 
and are so homely and so necessary. It is for 



138 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

US, friends, who have long been members of 
the church, to consider at this season how far 
we ourselves are giving the youth of this con- 
gregation the assistance of a good example. 



THE EICH YOUNG MAN. 

And when he was gone forth into the way there came one 
running, and kneeled to him, and said, Good Master, what 
shall I do that I may inherit eternal life ? — Mark 10 : 17. 

He belonged to the privileged classes. The 
incident is described by three of the evan- 
gelists, and they all agree that he was rich, — 
he had great possessions ; one of them adds 
that he was a ruler, — he had high position. 
He was young, too, and was making plans to 
live a larger life. He was looking out into 
the world with eager anticipation and en- 
thusiasm, making up his mind what great 
things he would do. 

The Master of men, the moment He saw 
him, loved him. There he came running 
and kneeled at Jesus' feet, and the Master 
looking down into his expectant eyes, loved 
him. Christ was in sympathy with young 
men ; He understood them. His intimate 
friends were young men. The Christian mis- 
sion, the supreme adventure of faith, the 
purpose to win the world and to bring its 
mighty kingdoms to the feet of Christ, was 

139 



140 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

undertaken by young men. The Master wel- 
comed this young man, holding out His 
hands. 

The man had possessions and position but 
he was not therewith content. He was pro- 
foundly dissatisfied: dissatisfied with himself. 

He was living a pleasant life, but he had 
become aware that there was a pleasure which 
all his money could not purchase. There was 
a peace and joy of which he had faint, dis- 
tant glimpses in his dreams, and which he saw 
clearly shining in the face of Christ ; and he 
desired it. But the world could not give it to 
him. 

He was living a good life. In spite of the 
manifold temptations, which assail the rich as 
stoutly as they assail the poor, he was an up- 
right, clean, honest and honorable man. He 
kept the commandments. His conscience was 
congenial with the moral law. But even this, 
which is a true source of contentment, did 
not content him. He felt that somehow he 
lacked something. He perceived that there 
was a difference between his life and the life 
eternal. 

For the word " eternal," as he understood 
it, is not an adjective of time or place. It is 
an adjective of quality. The life which he 
desired was not simply a life everlasting, into 



THE EICH YOUNG MAN. 141 

which he might presently enter by the gate of 
the grave. He did not look that far ahead. 
He was interested, as every healthy young 
man is, in the immediate present. What he 
wanted was a heavenly life, to-day and here. 
Such a life would be eternal in the sense of 
being in accord with that which is eternal, 
and thus independent of passing chances and 
changes of good and evil fortune. It would 
be eternal because it would be fitted to go on 
without serious interruption into the life to 
come. 

Here, for example, is a house which is an 
impertinence in the landscape. It is so mani- 
festly cheap and temporary, and in its shape 
and color so out of harmony with the ground 
whereon it stands, that it is an affront to 
nature. Here is another house which is akin 
to all the hills and fields, strong as the rocks 
and apparently as lasting, belonging to the 
woods and meadows, brother to the trees, and 
looking as if God had made it and not man. 
You remember old cathedrals, over the sea, 
which have that eternal aspect. The differ- 
ence between such structures and the wooden 
lodging-houses which stand by the side of the 
country road in the neighborhood of the small 
station as one looks out of the car window, 
is elemental. It is like the difference be- 



142 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

tvveen the respectable life which the rich 
young man was living and the eternal life 
which he desired to live. 

His question suggests that he had already 
learned that life eternal is to be attained along 
the way of social service. " What good thing 
shall I do," he cries, " that I may have eternal 
life ? " It is possible that the good thing to 
which he expected the Master to direct him 
was an offering of sacrifice, or a mortification 
of the flesh, or some other personal matter; 
but it is more likely that he awaited a social 
counsel which should send him on some errand 
of helpful ministry. Anyhow, the answer 
shows plainly enough that in the mind of 
Jesus the eternal and the social were vitally 
connected. In order to live a life eternal, it is 
essential that we live a life fraternal. 

Aspiring thus to do his highest duty, the 
man begins aright. Straight he goes to con- 
fer with Jesus Christ. 

For the heart of all right social living is the 
spirit of Jesus. Canon Barnett, the founder 
of Toynbee Hall, writing a book full of social 
enthusiasm applied to social betterment, and 
dealing in every page with the service of man, 
entitles it the " Service of God." The idea 
throughout is that we can serve man effect- 
ively only in the name of God, only in the 



THE RICH YOUNG MAN. 1.1:3 

spirit of the Son of God. This is the con- 
clusion of long and successful experience. 

Some have tried to learn their social duty 
and to perform it by the study of economics, 
leaving religion out. The results may be read 
in the writings of those economists, now hap- 
pily silent, who constructed their social theories 
on the hypothesis that man is a machine, or an 
animal ; that he has a mouth and two hands, 
and no soul. 

Some have tried to get a right conception of 
their social duty by a study of ethics, some- 
times leaving religion out, and sometimes 
bringing in all manner of queer, fantastical, 
remote and obsolete religions. The result, so 
far as these imported creeds are concerned, is 
like that which would be gained by a study of 
the medical treatises of the Middle Ages. The 
mediaeval books may amuse the student, but 
they will teach him absolutely nothing. All 
that is true in them has been brought forward 
into modern practice. So with the queer 
religions. They are remote or obsolete be- 
cause they are in the place in w^hich they 
properly belong. Everything that is true or 
helpful in them is in the plain gospels. 

No; ethics and economics are profitable 
studies, but what is essentially needed in order 
that we may attain that social life, which is 



144 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

eternal life, is more than a book, even the best 
book ; it is a life. We need the books, but the 
one thing which is supremely needful is that 
we enter first into the realized presence of 
Jesus. Unless we do that, we cannot even 
read the books aright. We cannot understand 
the social facts. We cannot do our social 
duty. No man ever helped another man, save 
in the spirit of Jesus. He maj^^ not have 
taken that sacred name upon his lips, he may 
not have been aware what spirit he was of, 
but that was it. Wherever good intention 
goes astray, and they who would help their 
fellow men do them harm instead, the initial 
error is to be found in some departure from 
His precepts, who is the way and the life. 
The rich young man came to Jesus run- 
ning, and kneeled to Him. We must do the 
same. It is the only right beginning either of 
social study or of social living. Look at it, 
until you see it with the eyes of your soul : the 
Master, standing strong and gracious, and the 
young man kneeling to Him. 

Let us see, now, how Jesus deals with the 
rich young man. 

Immediately, He stops him and asks a search- 
ing question. The man comes running, full of 
enthusiasm ; he kneels to Him in admiration 
and reverence ; and Jesus loves him. It might 



THE RICH YOUNG MAN. 145 

easily be said that Jesus needs him. The 
young man has possessions and position. Will 
it not be well for the new Christian movement 
to enlist this wealthy and influential recruit ? 
Will it not be well, for the general good, to 
defer somewhat to this unusually desirable 
disciple, and make it easy for him to come in ? 
Is not this the kind of man we want, young, 
rich, and willing ? The little group of fisher- 
men and peasants, one would say, may wisely 
hold out hands of cordial welcome to young 
Master Dives. But you see what Jesus does. 
He meets the j^oung man, altogether over- 
looking what he has, asking only what he is. 
He deals with him not as a rich man, but as a 
man. 

This was Master Dives' first lesson in the 
social aspects of the Christian religion. The 
essential preliminary to any right social living 
is that Christian insight which looks through 
all material possessions to the man himself. 
If we are to do our social duty, we must meet 
our neighbors in the spirit of Him who cared 
for w^hat people were, not for what they wore. 
A good many artificial distinctions, based on 
dress and descent and houses and lands and 
face and voice and occupation must be put 
away out of our minds till they are as clear 
and open as the mind of Christ. 



146 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

Jesus taught the rich young man that riches 
are of no social account in the kingdom of 
heaven. 

This lesson, thus indicated by the fact that 
our Lord, instead of receiving the man imme- 
diately, stopped him and asked a question, 
was followed by another lesson which is indi- 
cated in the question which He asked. The 
young man had begun politely, in the pleasant 
manner of his kind, with a conventional word 
of compliment. He had addressed Jesus as 
" good Master." Jesus says, What do you 
mean ? Why do you call Me good ? 

That is, on the personal side, Christ desires 
allegiance, but it must be thoughtful and con- 
sidered allegiance. Whoever tenders it must 
understand what he is about. One came to 
Him, upon another like occasion, saying, 
" Lord, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou 
goest." But Jesus answered, " Foxes have 
holes and the birds of the air have nests, but 
the Son of Man hath not where to lay His 
head." The undertaking of discipleship was 
to our Lord a very serious matter, and He in- 
sisted that men should look at it attentively 
and face all its hard consequences before they 
made their resolution. He never encouraged 
any sudden, impetuous, emotional decision. 
He tested those who came to Him in that 



THE RICH YOUNG MAN. M7 

spirit, and was not satisfied until He had made 
them think. There is a tombstone in the 
Copps Hill burying-groand at Boston, in- 
scribed, " He was an enemy to enthusiasm." 
Our Lord was not an enemy to enthusiasm. 
When He beheld this enthusiastic j^oung man, 
He loved him. But He felt the need of car- 
rying enthusiasm on into serious determina- 
tion. He was in profound sympathy with the 
visions of youth ; with the ardor, the courage 
and the confidence with which men pass out 
of the life of the student into the life of the 
citizen. He looked into the eager eyes of this 
young man who was asking for some great 
good thing to do, and loved him. But because 
He loved him, He stopped him with a ques- 
tion, that he might weigh his words and think 
what he was about. 

Also, on the social side, if the man were to 
undertake, as he seemed to intend, a larger 
service of his fellow men, it must be a reason- 
able service. He must enter into it not merely 
from an impulse of the moment, but with de- 
liberation. In order to be a helpful social 
worker, he must be a thoughtful person. He 
must consider what he wished to say before he 
said it. He must have the habit of sincerity 
and of accuracy. Then he would be likely to 
consider what he wished to do before he did it. 



148 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

A good deal of excellently intentioned social 
ministry is spoiled by precisely the defect 
which Jesus immediately saw in this young 
man. The social w^orker is full of enthusiasm 
and sympathy and energy and zeal. He enters 
into the social settlement or the municipal 
league or the association for reforming his 
neighbors in this way or in that, with a fervor 
which sometimes makes the cautious procedure 
of his colleagues appear cold and calculating. 
He comes running, and kneels down in the 
presence of the holy cause, asking, What good 
thing shall I do ? But presently he finds that 
the work is slow and hard ; it demands pa- 
tience ; it is not romantically interesting. 
And the parable of the seed growing quickly 
finds in him another illustration. He gets 
tired and discouraged. Our Lord tested that 
young man in order to see what spirit he was 
of. He tried him to find out if he had staying 
qualities. 

First, He tried him according to the law of 
simple obedience. "If thou wilt enter into 
life," He said, " keep the commandments.'' 

That disappointed the young man grievously. 
He felt like the Syrian general when the 
prophet sent him to take a bath in the little, 
narrow, shallow, muddy Jordan. He had ex- 
pected to be given some spectacular, heroic 



THE EICH YOUKG MAK. 149 

task ; he had looked for some new, engaging 
duty ; and here was nothing but the old com- 
mandments, every one of which he had known 
by heart for years. " Which ? " he asked ; 
still hoping that Jesus might have some hidden 
meaning in His words, and might intend some- 
thing out of the ordinary. And when he 
learned that the commandments were only the 
old ten, he said in a tone of impatience, " All 
these have I kept from my youth up." For 
he did not know the truth which is contained 
in the allegory of the high ideals ; where the 
explorer who is searching for the high ideals 
learns at last that they are not a range of ro- 
mantic mountains, but a series of populated 
plains where men are plowing and reaping, 
and buying and selling, and women are doing 
the errands of the house. 

The lesson is that the social duty to which 
Christ would immediately and supremely direct 
us is not to be looked for in the distance. It 
is close at hand. It confronts us in the cir- 
cumstances of our daily lives. It is a fine 
thing to engage in the betterment of a city, 
but there is no training for that great service 
comparable to the exercise which is to be had 
in the betterment of a college ; and the place 
where the betterment of a college may most 
effectively begin is in a man's own club and 



150 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

room. It is a fine thing to work in a social 
settlement, but in the meantime every Chris- 
tian household ought to be a social settlement, 
a distributing centre of beneficial influences, a 
contribution to the righteousness and the hap- 
piness of the neighborhood. 

The essential thing is the faithful perform- 
ance of the common duties, whose importance 
in God's sight may be inferred from the fact 
that He has made so many of them. They 
are nearest to our hand by His divine appoint- 
ment, that we may the more naturally do 
them. To be honest in the details of the 
smallest transactions, to be true in the emer- 
gencies of the most familiar conversations, to 
have a strong, wholesome and masculine clean- 
ness of speech and of thought, to be courteous, 
considerate, cheerful and helpful under one's 
own roof ; in a word, — as our Lord said, — to 
keep the commandments, the old plain com- 
mandments, is to render a social service which 
is not only more acceptable to God but more 
beneficial to men than, — missing this, — to be 
the president or the vice-president or the secre- 
tary or the treasurer of twenty societies for 
the reformation of one's neighbors. The 
initial thing which a man owes to the com- 
munity is to be a good man himself. That is 
what Christ said to the rich young man in the 



THE RICH YOUNG MAN. 151 

gospel; and that is what He says to-day to 
every college man, and every other man. 
The question is, What good thing shall I do ? 
and the answer is, First of all, be as good as 
you can. 

Thus our Lord tried Master Dives by the 
Ik'^t simple obedience. Then He tried him 
by the law of an earnest purpose. The young 
man had kept the commandments, but he was 
not satisfied. Nobody ought to be satisfied 
with that. "What lack I yet?" he cried. 
And Jesus answered, " Go, sell whatsoever 
thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt 
have treasure in heaven." 

This He said not because He held that a 
man must be poor in order to be good. If He 
had believed that. He would have bidden the 
young man to destroy all that he had ; instead 
of that he was told to give it away. He was 
to be poor, but the poor were to be rich. This 
He said not to the rich in general, but to this 
rich man in particular. Mary and Martha and 
Lazarus were rich. They were so rich that 
one time Mary broke at Jesus' feet an alabaster 
box of very precious ointment, worth several 
hundred dollars. They were never bidden to 
be poor. Neither were other rich persons 
whose houses Jesus visited. The truth is that 
while wealth and poverty are of immeasurable 



152 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

moment to us, they meant little to Him. It 
seems incredible, but it is the fact that a good 
many of the things to get which men are con- 
tinually making themselves miserable, about 
which men are going to war — sometimes in 
public, sometimes in private, — for which men 
are giving their whole lives and putting their 
immortal souls in pawn, were totally unin- 
teresting to Him. Whether men were rich or 
poor. He did not care. It made no difference 
to Him. He did care supremely w^hether they 
were rich or poor in the currency of heaven. 
And when He saw that a man was so devoted 
to these lesser things that he was losing his 
sense of the value of better things. He tried to 
deliver that man out of his temptations. 

So it was here. The rich young man was 
profoundly selfish. He was so selfish that he 
came to Jesus Christ and asked to be told 
some good thing to do not for the sake of 
others, nor for the sake of doing good, but for 
the advantage of his own soul. What good 
thing shall I do that I may have eternal life ? 
The man was thinking of himself. Rich as he 
was, privileged as he was, with his possessions 
and his position, he had been brought up that 
way. There was not in his life betv^een dawn 
and sunset any day, the least purpose to bene- 
fit his neighbor. The man was dissatisfied, he 



THE RICH YOUNG MAK. 153 

knew not why. He longed for something 
which he had not, but what it was he could 
not tell. He knew that he was not living an 
eternal life, but in absolute ignorance he cried, 
"What lack I yet?" And Jesus told him 
plainly what he lacked. He had no earnest 
social purpose. Honestl}^, in his heart, he was 
intent upon himself. That is what was the 
matter with him. And when he was brought 
to the test, and it was proposed to him to do 
good to his fellow men at his own expense, he 
saw it, and drew back. He made the great 
refusal. He was sad at that saying and went 
away grieved, for he had great possessions. 



THE WIND AND THE FIRE. 

And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a 
rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they 
were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues 
like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. — Acts 2 : 2, 3. 

The wind and the fire were symbols of 
spiritual realities. There was a sound which 
reminded those who heard it of the noise of a 
rushing mighty wind; and there was a sight 
which reminded those who saw it of the flam- 
ing of a hundred tiny tongues of fire ; but be- 
yond this comparison, the record tells us noth- 
ing. It is plain that we stand here in a 
domain to which the meteorologist has no 
access. The pentecostal wind could not have 
been measured by the instruments which tell 
the speed and direction of currents of air ; the 
pentecostal fire would not have affected a 
thermometer. They were like the halos 
which glow about the heads of saints in 
pictures, at which nobody could light a candle. 

In the " Holy Night " of Correggio, you re- 
member how the stable of the nativity is 
lighted with the radiance which shines from 
the face of the Child. That is what the 

154 



THE WIND AND THE FIRE. 155 

painter saw. Very likely the shepherds, who 
had already seen a celestial light in the sky, saw 
it glowing again in the stable. Ko doubt, the 
holy mother saw it. But to a casual passer-by, 
or to a stable-boy coming in to feed the cows, 
there would have been no light except such as 
glimmered in the lantern. Probably the man 
in the street, hearing a commotion on the day 
of Pentecost in the upper room, — if that was 
the place, — and rushing in, would have missed 
all sound and hearing of the wind and fire. 
There is a good deal of difference in the de- 
tails of the various descriptions of Saul's ad- 
venture on the Damascus road, but all accounts 
agree that none of Saul's companions saw or 
heard what he both saw and heard. To them 
there appeared a light and a sound ; to him 
there appeared a face and a voice. It shows 
the difference between eyesight and insight. 

On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit 
wonderfully revealed Himself to the disciples, 
filled them with a new consciousness of His di- 
vine presence, and blessed them. That is, in the 
midst of a world which is full of God, wherein 
we live continually in the sight of God, sud- 
denly this little company of holy persons were 
made aware of God. Out of the infinite 
silence, God spoke to them. And it was as if 
the wind blew which swept across the face of 



156 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

Elijah in the cleft of the rock ; it was as if 
the fire blazed amongst them, which Elijah 
saw before he heard the still small voice. 
That is as near as the narrator can get to it. 
The hearts of those good men and women 
were stirred as if a breeze were blowing from 
beyond the stars, and there was a light in their 
faces such as shines along the path of God. 

There are two ways of describing an event, 
one statistical and the other symbolical. They 
are as different as photography is different 
from painting. The statistical narrative gives 
us the plain facts as they would have been re- 
flected in a mirror, had one been hanging on 
the wall. The symbolical narrative gives us 
the facts interpreted, and to them adds still 
other facts of an intangible and spiritual sort, 
such as no looking-glass has ever seen, and for 
which there is no descriptive language except 
such as is used by poets and artists. 

Take, for instance, the two accounts, which 
Dean Stanley has significantly set side by side 
from the Book of Genesis, of the migration of 
Abraham. Here is first the statistical narra- 
tive. " And Terah took Abram his son, 
and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and 
Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's 
wife; and they went forth from TJr of the 
Chaldees to go into the land of Canaan : and 



THE WIND AND THE FIRE. 157 

they came unto Haran and dwelt there. 
. . . And Abram took Sarai his wife, 
and Lot his brother's son, and all their sub- 
stance that they had gathered, and the souls 
that they had gotten in Haran ; and they went 
forth to go into the land of Canaan : and into 
the land of Canaan they came." That is the 
matter-of-fact statement of what happened. 
That is how the thing looked to the neighbors. 
That is what people said about it as they wa- 
tered their camels at Ur of the Chaldees. But 
there was more to it than that. Here is the 
symbolical narrative. " The Lord said unto 
Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from 
th}^ kindred, and from thy father's house, unto 
a land that I will show thee : and I w^ill make 
of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee 
and make thy name great : and thou shalt be 
a blessing ; and I will bless them that bless 
thee, and curse him that curseth thee : and in 
thee shall all the families of the earth be 
blessed." You see how much higher and 
richer that is, and in the best sense truer. 
There was an impulse in the heart of Abraham 
driving him out. He looked across the wide 
plains into the far future. He had hopes and 
purposes of which the men who pitched his 
tent knew nothing. This is expressed by the 
historian in symbol. He tells us that God 



158 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

Stood by the side of Abraham and spoke to 
him. The eternal God, maker of the universe 
of suns and stars, spoke to this man who dwelt 
among his flocks in Asia. Indeed, He did. 
The statement is in the language of poetry, 
but for the fact which is thus stated, — the fact 
that the impulse in the heart of Abraham 
came from on high, — no other words were 
strong enough. 

So it is in the account of the day of Pente- 
cost. It is very different from the description 
of the shipwreck in the same book. The 
shipwreck is described statistically. Every 
detail is set down precisely as it happened. 
Any sailor of the crew, telling about it after- 
wards, would have said the same things. But 
the events of Pentecost are described symbol- 
ically. That which happened here was too 
great to be put into the common phrases of 
matter-of-fact narration. To say simply that, 
being there assembled and praying, the hearts 
of the disciples were suddenly and wonderfully 
affected with an unusual sense of the presence 
of God, was not enough. The historian be- 
comes a poet. The winds blow and the fires 
blaze. The dullest reader perceives that some- 
thing extraordinary is taking place. That is 
the effect which the writer intends to produce. 
Or, rather, that is the effect which the event 



THE WIND AND THE FIRE. 159 

itself did actually produce in the minds of those 
who experienced it. They came down out of 
the chamber of the Pentecostal blessing, and 
declared that the whole house had been shaken 
by a great wind, and that there had been 
tongues of fire in the room on all their heads. 
For we have got to put our emotions into the 
best words that we can find. The emotions, if 
they are deep and strong, if they are inspired 
of God, are too great for any words. How did 
you feel in that moment of sudden joy or sur- 
prise or grief, in that swift happiness of attain- 
ment after long and doubtful waiting, in that 
hour when the rapture of the consciousness of 
God filled your soul? How did you feel? 
You cannot adequately answer. St. Paul said 
that he felt one time as if he had been taken 
up into the third heaven. That was the best 
sentence he could find to hold his thought. 
The men and women of Pentecost said that 
they felt as if all the mighty winds of God 
were blowing and the fires of God were blaz- 
ing. That was the best thing they could 
think of to say. Even then, it did not express 
their sense of awe and wonder ; but it had to 
suflice, since there was nothing else to which 
they could liken it. 

The truth is that nobody knows what hap- 
pened in that hour of exaltation. It is de- 



160 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

scribed in comparisons taken from the material 
world, but the event itself was in the domain 
of the spirit. All this about the wind and the 
fire is the endeavor to somehow express that 
which was essentially unutterable. It is an 
attempt to put into words a spiritual experi- 
ence which transcended speech. 

What did they mean to say ? They meant, 
I think, to say that there, as they prayed, thej^ 
became aware of God. 

The blowing of the wind was a symbol of 
the mystery of God. "The wind bloweth 
where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound 
thereof and canst not tell whence it cometh 
and whither it goeth : so is every one that is 
born of the Spirit." So too is the Divine 
Spirit ; surrounding us like the air which we 
breathe, as invisible, and as essential to our 
life. The burning of the fire was a symbol of 
the glory of God, of the brightness and the 
majesty of God ; and it rested on their heads 
in token that the glorious and infinite God 
was considering them, caring for them, and 
blessing them. 

A like thing happened, in 1655, in a country 
town in England. At Wanstead, in Essex, 
William Penn, afterwards the founder of a 
commonwealth, at that time a lad of twelve 
years, " was suddenly surprised with an in- 



THE Wll^B AND THE FIRE. 161 

ward comfort and as he thought an external 
glory in the room, which gave rise to religious 
emotions, during which he had the strongest 
conviction of the being of a God, and that the 
soul of man was capable of enjoying commu- 
nication with him. He believed also that the 
seal of Divinity had been put upon him at that 
moment, or that he had been awakened or 
called upon to a holy life." That was William 
Penn's pentecost. The wind did not blow, as 
it did at Jerusalem, but the fire burned, — the 
same fire, meaning the same thing. 

It is a rare experience, but it has come 
again and again into the life of man. Some 
have perceived the voice of God in the rush- 
ing of a mighty wind ; some have seen His 
face in the blazing of a sudden fire ; some have 
heard articulate words out of the sky ; some, 
as they knelt in church or in their own rooms, 
have been overpowered by a new sense of the 
divine presence. I am not concerned to in- 
quire whether these sights and sounds were 
impressions made upon the senses or upon the 
soul only : there they were. Of whatever 
nature, physiological or psychological, there 
they happened. St. Paul, who had passed 
through one of these experiences, said that 
whether it was in the body or out of the body, 
he could not tell. The important thing is the 



162 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

fact of the recognition of God. And of that 
there is no doubt. The men and women of 
pentecost, and hundreds of other men and 
women on other days and in other places, were 
made aware of God. Suddenly they per- 
ceived God. There He was with them in the 
room. 

What I am trying to do is to show you that 
the day of pentecost is in line with all the 
other days, and that what God did then for 
the apostles and the holy women He will still 
do for us. Whitsunday is the commemoration 
not of a blessing which God gave once, and 
never gives again, but of a constant blessing 
which came then to those whose hearts were 
ready and receptive, and will come now to any 
one of us, if we will put ourselves in that posi- 
tion. 

** Henceforth my heart shaU sigh no more, 
For olden time and holier shore : 
God's love and blessing, then and there, 
Are now and here and everywhere." 

For US too the pentecostal wind will blow, the 
fire will burn. For the wind and the fire are 
but symbols of the divine presence. 

The Whitsunday saints were sure of God. 
That is what made the difference between 
that day and all the other past days of their 



THE WIND AND THE FIRE. 163 

lives. Now at last, after long blundering and 
questioning and waiting and doubting, they 
were sure of God. 

They had lived in the very presence of 
Jesus Christ, and yet had been unaware of 
God. Occasionally, their eyes must have been 
opened to catch at least a glimmer of His 
presence ; but still, they knew Him not. Or, 
if they knew Him, it was but such knowledge 
as is implied in the acceptance of a general 
belief, and in the recitation of a common creed. 
Of course, they knew of God's existence. But 
they did not know God so that the conscious- 
ness of Him dominated all their life. 

There they were, good men, religious men, 
the daily companions of Jesus, and yet un- 
aware of God. Tou remember how, at the 
very end of all His instruction of them, in the 
midst of the last lesson, they said, " Lord, 
show us the Father ! " And you remember 
how, the next day, they all fled. The man 
who is aware of God does not run away. No- 
body can make him afraid. That is one of 
the signs of the recognition of God. After 
the day of pentecost, no apostle turned his 
back on danger. 

There they w^ere, then, on the morning of 
that day, waiting for the promise of the Fa- 
ther, w^aiting for the fulfilment of the word 



164 THE HUMAN NATUKE OF THE SAINTS. 

of Christ. " I have yet many things to say 

unto you," He had told them, '' but ye cannot 

bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit 

of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all 

truth." And as they waited, day after day, 

meditating and praying, looking back over all 

that He had said and done, trying to get it 

into their hearts and lives, asking God to help 

them, suddenly the Spirit came. It was as 

when one studies a great matter for a long 

time in vain, and one day the meaning of it 

flashes in upon the mind. That is a coming 

of the Spirit. It was as when one, after long 

deliberation, reaches a decision, and every^ 

thing is cleared up and thenceforth life 

goes on along a straight way. Then too the 

Spirit comes. There they knelt, praying their 

prayers, very much as we do, trying to realize 

God ; and suddenly, nobody knows how, 

swiftly and silently like the operation of the 
eternal forces,— a great light broke upon their 
souls. After that, everything was different. 
They lived on a new earth under a new 
heavens. The wind seemed to be blowing all 
about them, the fire seemed to be blazing on 
their heads, and they came out new men. 
Thenceforth, they were absolutely sure of 
God : and they lived like men who are con- 
tinually aware of God. 



THE WIND AND THE FIEE. 165 

God grant us also the pentecostal blessing. 
God give us grace to know Him ; that we may 
live in the continual consciousness of His 
presence. God help us, who are trying so 
ineffectively to live the life of religion ; who 
pray, but so often with indifference ; and who 
go about in God's world, thinking of God so 
little ; who fall so often into foolish tempta- 
tions, and behave ourselves so unworthily of 
our Christian name; who say the creed so 
often and realize it so seldom ; who are so un- 
aware of God, — God help us, as He helped 
the Whitsunday congregation at the begin- 
ning. Then when we pray, we will address 
God as we would speak to a present friend. 
In our daily tasks, we will increase our faith- 
fulness and diligence and joy by the remem- 
brance that we are fellow laborers with God. 
In our continual temptations, we will be as- 
sisted by the assurance that God sees what we 
do, and hears what we say. As we walk 
abroad, in these perfect days, we will be like 
our parents in the oldest of all beautiful 
stories, who beheld the Lord God walking 
beside them under the shade of the trees in 
the cool of the day. Only we will not fear, 
as they did ; but will put out our hand to take 
His hand. Then shall the wind which blows 
along the summer road, and the fire which 



166 THE HUMAN NATURE ON THE SAINTS. 

shines in the summer sun, be revelations of the 
eternal God, as they were that old day in 
Jerusalem. We will be aware of God; and 
every common day will be a pentecost. 



AT THE TABLE OF ZACCHEUS 

And Zaccheus stood and said unto the Lord : Behold, 
Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor ; and if I have 
taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore 
him fourfold. — Luke 19 : 8. 

The Lord sat at the table in the house of 
Zaccheus. He sat often at men's tables. The 
Son of Man, as He said Himself, came eating 
and drinking ; and there is accordingly a great 
deal in the New Testament about eating and 
drinking. These necessary and pleasant acts 
appear in these pages as intimately connected 
with the life and teaching of Jesus, and with 
the Christian religion. 

As soon as Christ has gathered about Him 
a little group of disciples, they are all invited 
to dinner, and they accept the invitation : and 
the Master not only sits at the table but con- 
tributes to the feast. When He sees a multi- 
tude approaching in a place remote from inns 
or houses. His first thought is one of hospital- 
ity : How shall we provide bread that these 
may eat ? And He makes them all sit down 
in order on the green grass and feeds them. 
He is continually illuminating and applying 

167 



168 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAIKTS. 

His spiritual instruction by means of illustra- 
tions taken from the table. The parable of 
the great supper, the discourse at Capernaum 
on the Bread of Life, the picturing of the joys 
to come under the figure of a banquet, will 
occur to every reader of the Bible. He in- 
stitutes a social meal as the characteristic 
sacred rite of His religion, and assembles our 
most holy memories and associations about the 
eating of bread and the drinking of wine. 
To-day the most important article of furniture 
in a Christian Church is a table, — a supper- 
table, for the common meal of the Christian 
family. The homely outlines of the table may 
be lost in the glories of carving or hidden 
beneath embroidered cloths, but it is a table, 
nevertheless. 

We have no reason to think that our Lord 
entered into the social pleasures of His time 
simply from a sense of duty, or that He went 
to dinner in order to get a good chance to 
preach a sermon to the host. He went be- 
cause He liked to go. He saw, of course, the 
spiritual opportunities of society. He knew 
that in order to speak to men effectively, it is 
necessary first to understand them, and then 
to be in sympathy with them ; and it is plain 
that a natural way to gain this understanding 
and show this sympathy is to meet men 



AT THE TABLE OF ZACCHEUS. 169 

familiarly, sitting beside them at their tables. 
But Jesus at the table comes closer to our 
common life than that. He sanctifies our 
simplest and most natural enjoj^ments. He 
brings our domestic and social interests within 
the range of religion. He teaches us that 
whether we eat or drink or whatsoever we do, 
we may do all in the name of the Lord Jesus. 
He contradicts that narrow conception of re- 
ligion which accounts that praying is an act 
of religion, and that the definite doing of a 
Christian deed is an act of religion, but that 
here religion stops. True religion never stops. 
It takes in the whole of life. It includes our 
commonest enjoyments. To partake of the 
Lord's Supper is indeed to enter into a high 
privilege of religion, but we are also behaving 
ourselves as Christian persons when we sit 
cheerfully at our own tables or at the tables 
of our neighbors, when we break bread at 
home, like the earliest disciples, and eat our 
meat with gladness and singleness of heart. 

The Lord sat at the table of Zaccheus a self- 
invited guest. Zaccheus had gone out that 
morning merely to see Him as He passed by 
in the street. The idea of asking Him to din- 
ner had not so much as entered his mind. 
Zaccheus was a rich man, but no respectable 
people dined with him. It was suggested some 



170 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

time ago that men who had made fortunes in 
dishonest or unjust ways should be made to 
feel the disapproval of society : that was the 
plan which was in full force in Jerusalem and 
Jericho. Zaccheus had made his money in a 
business which his neighbors detested, and 
they showed him plainly what they thought 
of him. When in his eagerness " to see Jesus 
who He was," he climbed up into a tree, being 
short of stature, the crowd hooted at him. 
At least, we may guess that it was from 
some derisive call that the Master learned 
the publican's name. There he was, the most 
unpopular citizen of Jericho, looking down 
out of a sycamore-tree beside the road, with 
everybody pointing to him and shouting at 
him. And when Jesus came to the place. He 
looked up and saw him, and said unto him, 
Zaccheus, make haste and come down ; for to- 
day I must abide at thy house. 

That shows how much our Lord cared for 
popularity. In the midst of this crowd, ac- 
claiming Him and deriding Zaccheus, Jesus 
takes the part of Zaccheus. Let us under- 
stand it clearly. Zaccheus was a publican, 
but there are no publicans in our part of the 
country. The name does not mean much to 
us. Let us get at it in this way : Zaccheus is 
a contractor, who is notorious for his extor- 



AT THE TABLE OF ZACCHEUS. 171 

tions ; Zaccheus is a landlord, whose tenements 
are an offense to all good citizens ; Zaccheus 
is the keeper of the worst saloon or gambling 
place in Jericho. That is the kind of man he 
was. The good people of Jericho hated the 
sight of Zaccheus, and they had reason to hate 
him. It was not all prejudice. It w^as not 
simply the natural enmity of a subdued people 
against the man who represented their masters, 
and collected their masters' taxes. Zaccheus 
was a robber. Under the cover of law, by 
false accusation, as he himself confesses, he 
took money out of people's pockets. It is true 
that he was very desirous to see Jesus, and 
that may mean that already he was looking 
towards a better life ; the fact that he made 
haste and came down out of the tree and re- 
ceived Him joyfully, would seem to indicate 
that. Nevertheless, when Jesus looked up 
and saw Zaccheus, He saw a man of whom He 
probably knew nothing except that everybody 
seemed to hate him. And He chose that man 
to dine with, on that account. The great 
spiritual Master comes to town, and declining 
all courtesies of the clergy and chief citizens. 
He goes to dinner with a man who ought to 
be in jail. 

Of course, everybody was scandalized. 
" When they saw it, they all murmured." 



172 THE HtJMAK NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

That is, they began at once to talk, each with 
his neighbor, and to say how astonishing and 
objectionable it was. He has gone, they said, 
to be guest with a man that is a sinner ! To 
them that was an amazing thing : to Him, it 
was not only natural but imperative ; it was 
the only thing to do. That was the difference 
between them. Religion for them was a com- 
fortable possession of personal privilege, with 
which a man might be content, being approved 
of God and sure of everlasting salvation. 
Religion for Him was a divine impulse, a 
" passion of compassion," a spirit of fraternal 
affection whereby whenever He saw anybody 
whom He could help He was irresistibly 
moved to help him. Jesus looked about in 
every company and went straight to the person 
who needed Him most. That is what He meant 
when He said that He came as a physician to 
minister not to the well but to the sick. He 
came to Jericho as a physician, and His eye 
lighted upon Zaccheus. The Pharisees, with 
their satisfied and selfish souis, could not 
understand Him. The Pharisees have never 
understood Him. 

It is plain that we have here two irreconcil- 
able conceptions of religion. According to 
one idea, religion is for the privileged ; they 
are to enjoy it by themselves ; they are to en- 



AT THE TABLE OF ZACCHEUS. 173 

shrine it in beautiful churches where strangers 
are not welcome ; they are to thank God that 
they are not as other men are ; and as for 
these other men, they are to content them- 
selves with disapproving of them ; they will 
not dream of dining with them, or of dealing 
with them in any fraternal or even courteous 
fashion. According to the other idea, religion 
is possessed by the privileged in order that 
they may extend the truth of it and the bless- 
ing of it as speedily as they may among the 
unprivileged ; their hearts and their hands go 
out to those who are less happy than they are ; 
and finding those whom they confidently be- 
lieve to be mistaken, whether in conduct or in 
creed, straightway they desire to make friends 
with them that they may persuade them into 
the better way. 

Zaccheus, being treated in this friendly 
manner, was immediately persuaded. And 
Zaccheus stood and said unto the Lord : Be- 
hold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the 
poor ; and if I have taken anything from any 
man by false accusation, I restore him four- 
fold. Why did he do that ? He had awaked 
that morning without a single generous im- 
pulse in his soul, an avaricious, keen, close, 
over-reaching person, intent on getting every 
possible dollar out of his neighbors, caring 



174 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

nothing for the poor. And here he stands, to 
the amazement of his friends, and probably to 
the amazement of himself, and gives away 
more than half his fortune. What has touched 
the heart of Zaccheus ? A fraternal word. It 
is likely that no respectable person had spoken 
pleasantly to Zaccheus for a year. Everybody 
had treated him in accordance with his bad 
name. And the consequence was that he had 
gone on deserving his bad name more and 
more. Nobody believed in him, and he gave 
nobody occasion to believe in him. Then 
came Jesus Christ, holding out His friendly 
hand, treating him like an honest man, sitting 
at his table, and never preaching at him a 
single word of a sermon : and Zaccheus was 
moved profoundly. And he stood up, saying 
what he did, and became a new man. 

That was our Lord's way. He helped man 
after man by the influence of His personal 
friendship. He was known as the friend of 
publicans and sinners, of those who had no 
friends. He won them into ways of righteous- 
ness by going out of His w^ay to be good to 
them. They responded, because they were so 
made as to respond to that sort of appeal. 
That is human nature. The parable of the con- 
tention between the wind and the sun as to 
which could most quickly persuade a traveler 



AT THE TABLE OF ZACCHEUS. 1Y5 

to take off his coat, is very old, but it has not 
even yet been taken much to heart. We try 
to change the minds or lives of others by 
abusing them, by punishing them, by scolding 
them, by giving them hard names, by entering 
into angry argument with them. And we fail 
always. We might as well contradict the law 
of gravitation. It is human nature to stand 
out strong and hard against that manner of 
approach. The will asserts itself. The per- 
son who is in error holds only the more stoutly 
to his error. He was in some doubt about it 
before you went at him in that belligerent 
fashion, and would presently have changed his 
way or his opinion: but you have prevented 
that. You have made a bad matter worse. 

Take it in the extreme case of such miscon- 
duct as sends a man to prison. The old way, 
the universal way until very recent years, was 
to treat the prisoner with all possible severity ; 
he was made to suffer ; he was regarded as a 
reprobate in whom there was no likelihood of 
betterment. The result was that he accepted 
the opinion of his respectable neighbors and 
justified it abundantly. He endured his sen- 
tence, and came out definitely confirmed in an 
evil life, worse than he went in. To-day we 
are trying the Lord's plan with Zaccheus. 
First offenders charged with minor offenses 



176 THE HUMAK NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

instead of being thrown into jail are being 
met with kindness and consideration. They 
are being set at liberty under the watch and 
word of a wise, responsible and sympathetic 
person whose mission is to help them out of 
their hard places, to give them friendly coun- 
sel, and to set them in the right way. This 
new Christian wisdom is being brought more 
and more into the whole system of treatment 
of the delinquent classes. It is at the heart of 
all the new prison reform. It has been dis- 
covered in the prisons that better results are 
gained by rewards than by punishments. 
Jesus Christ knew that, and exemplified it in 
the case of Zaccheus. 

Take it in the very different matter of ec- 
clesiastical controversy. The Zaccheus of this 
instance is the man who teaches what we be- 
lieve to be both untrue and dangerous. We 
are keenly alive to the necessity of putting a 
stop to that kind of teaching. The natural 
thing to do, as it seems to us, is to silence the 
teacher. Let us assail him with all possible 
weapons ; let us inform him that he is a heretic 
and a liar and a traitor to his sacred trusts. 
That is an easy thing to do, but the trouble is 
that it does not accomplish our purpose. We 
ought to know that. The thing has been tried 
often enough in the course of Christian his- 



AT THE TABLE OF ZACCHEUS. 177 

tory, and it does not succeed. It does not suc- 
ceed in reclaiming the heretic from the error 
of his ways, nor does it succeed in preventing 
others from agreeing with him. On the con- 
trary, it confirms him in his erroneous position, 
and gains him an increasing number of sympa- 
thetic disciples. The people who employ this 
method of assault may know a great deal 
about theology, but they are densely ignorant 
of human nature. What is needed is fraternal 
feeling and patience. Let the error be shown 
reasonably, fairly, with large and confident 
cheerfulness, with some sense of humor, with 
the saving grace of imagination, and without 
foolish adjectives. Give the man a decent 
chance to change his mind with dignity. 

So it is in regard to matters much nearer 
to us, social and domestic. Zaccheus is in our 
neighborhood, or in our family. Anybody of 
whom we easily think ill is Zaccheus. Let us 
try the Christian experiment of thinking well 
of him : not of his faults, not of his blunders, 
— that is impossible. I do not mean any such 
artificial affection. But of him, let us think 
well : that is, let us assure ourselves that 
Zaccheus is not so bad as he seems, that his 
innermost motives are right, that the thing 
w^hich he needs is such fraternal faith and 
friendliness as shall take him out of his defiant 



178 THE HUMAN ISTATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

attitude, and make him show the good which 
is in him. 

The truth is that other people are very like 
ourselves. We have our faults, as God and 
our neighbors know ; we make foolish blun- 
ders, and say and do things for which we are 
ashamed ; but we mean well, and the good in 
us is in majority. If we are called very 
sharply to account for our mistakes, we cannot 
help resenting it, and we are likely to continue 
in the mistakes just to vindicate our independ- 
ence. But if we are made cheerfully to know 
that our friends disagree or disapprove we are 
likely, if we are left alone, to amend ourselves ; 
and other people are very like ourselves. 

Let us, then, follow the Lord's example. 
Let us appreciate the predominant goodness of 
the world. Let us believe in our neighbors, in 
our employees, in our children. Let us keep 
back the sharp word which will serve only to 
defeat our purpose, and bring out another, — 
dull though it be,— which will gain at the 
same time our purpose and our friend. 



THE LORD'S BROTHER. 

After that, He appeared to James. — 1 Cor, 15 : 7. 

CoNCEENiNG this appearance of our Lord to 
James, we have no other notice than these 
words. Of the place, or time, or circumstances 
we know nothing. But we do know some- 
thing about James. 

He was our Lord's brother. 

There were four brothers: James, Joses, 
Jude and Simon; and several sisters. The 
carpenter's house at Nazareth was full of chil- 
dren. Jesus referred once to the games which 
they played. They pretended to be dancing 
at a wedding, or to be crying at a funeral. 
Sometimes some of them would be offended 
and refuse to play. "Whereunto," He said, 
" shall I liken this generation ? It is like unto 
children sitting in the markets, and calling 
unto their fellows. And saying. We have piped 
unto you, and ye have not danced ; we have 
mourned unto you and ye have not wept." 
When Jesus took up the little children in His 
arms He knew how to do it by experience. 
As the oldest child He had taken care of the 
younger. Up to the time when He w^as six- 

179 



180 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

teen years of age there must always have been 
a baby in the house. 

For there is no substantial basis for the 
theory that Joseph was a widower when he 
married Mary, and brought these six or seven 
children with him. That was the conjecture 
of men to whom the monastic life was the true 
pattern of good living. There is no reason to 
doubt that our Lord grew up in a normal 
household, in a large family, amidst the voices 
of young children. 

Of the sisters of our Lord, and of His broth- 
ers Joses and Simon, we have no knowledge. 
Even tradition is silent regarding them. St. 
Paul, who had some acquaintance with our 
Lord's brothers, says that when he knew them 
they were married and that their wives went 
with them on their missionary journeys. That 
is a pleasant thing to know ; but we cannot 
tell whether he referred to all four of the 
brothers or only to James and Jude. 

Jude is said to have written the epistle 
which bears his name, in which he describes 
himself as the brother of James. But the 
name was a common one, and the tradition is 
questioned. 

James, however, stands out a distinct figure 
concerning whom we have much information : 
most of it in the Acts of the Apostles. 



THE LOED'S brother. 181 

The life of James was divided into two 
parts by the event which St. Paul has set down 
in the text. The only thing which we are 
told about the first part of his life is that he 
was not in sympathy with Jesus. This was 
true of all the brethren, and apparently, at 
times, of the holy mother herself. For we 
read that as He taught the people His mother 
and His brethren stood on the outskirts of the 
crowd, desiring to speak with Him, evidently 
for the purpose of stopping Him and getting 
Him away. For there, in the presence of them 
all He declared His separation from His family, 
saying, " Who is My mother ? and who are My 
brethren?" And He stretched forth His 
hand towards His disciples, and said, "Behold 
My mother and My brethren ! for whosoever 
shall do the will of My Father which is in 
heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and 
mother." This is to be connected with the 
statement that His friends, or, as the word 
may be translated. His kinsfolk, went out to 
lay hold on Him, for they said, " He is beside 
Himself ! " That is what James thought of 
Him. Indeed we are informed with all plain- 
ness, and in so many words, that His brother 
did not believe in Him. It helps us to under- 
stand what He meant when He said that the 
Son of Man hath not where to lay His head. 



182 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

He had no home, because His ministry had 
made this separation between Him and His 
family. There were other friends who gath- 
ered about Him, and gave Him their faith, their 
allegiance and their love ; but James and Joses 
and Jude and Simon had no part in His life. 

Naturally, the arrest, the trial and the exe- 
cution of Jesus would serve only to emphasize 
this situation. We can easily imagine what 
they said at home. They lamented His bitter 
fate. His mother, loving Him with a mother's 
love, stood beside Him as He died. But they 
all felt that He had foolishly brought His fate 
upon His head. He should have stayed at 
home, minding His own business, going quietly 
to church like other people, paying proper re- 
spect to what the rabbi said, and keeping the 
law. 

So He died upon the cross, and that was 
logically the end. But behold, instead of 
being the end, it was the beginning. The 
apostles meet, and the brethren of the Lord 
meet with them. The apostles and the breth- 
ren, who up to this moment have been at 
variance, are now united. And presently, 
after a few years, when St. Paul visits Jeru- 
salem, he finds James, the Lord's brother, the 
accepted and revered head of the apostolic 
company : John, the disciple whom Jesus 



THE loed's brother. 183 

loved, and Peter, the disciple on whose con- 
fession of confidence the church was founded, 
being cheerfully subordinate to him. James, 
Peter and John, he says, " seemed to be 
pillars " ; but he puts James first. The un- 
believer is now the chief believer. 

This, of course, is a remarkable evidence of 
the resurrection. It is the more remarkable 
because no use is made of it in the apostolic 
argument. We read it between the lines. 
Nothing can be more certain that something 
of an extraordinary nature happened to con- 
vert James. St. Paul tells us what it was : the 
crucified Lord, his brother, dead and buried, 
appeared to him. I will not stop to dwell 
upon the value of this evidence, for I am con- 
cerned at present with the unbelief rather than 
with the belief of the Lord's brother. But 
everybody must see that this is a singular and 
noteworthy witness to the resurrection. For 
there are many stories of appearances after 
death: dim and vague, indeed, are the ac- 
counts, like the sights which they report, 
sometimes plain delusion, sometimes the fan- 
tastic result of a disorder of the mind, or of a 
disease of the nerves, and yet to be taken 
seriously into account by reason of the very 
number, universality and persistence of the 
tales. Commonly, however, the spirit beats 



184 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

retreat at the approach of unbelief. The man 
of hard sense, unemotional, logical, and in- 
stinctively incredulous sees no ghosts. Such a 
man, among the apostles, was Thomas. But 
Thomas may have been over-influenced by the 
convictions of his friends. James had no 
friends among the believers in the resurrection. 
In the nature of things, he had disliked the 
men who had gathered about his brother. 
The fact that they believed was but a further 
reason for his unbelief. That is the way of 
human nature. It meant much to a proud 
man like James to come forward into a 
company of persons whom he had alienated 
by his bitter words, and say, " I was mistaken. 
You w^ho stood beside Him did the thing 
which was right. I who showed Him no 
sympathy was in the wrong." That was a 
hard thing to say. Why did he say it ? Be- 
cause he had seen Jesus alive after the death 
upon the cross. 

But I am concerned, as I said, not with the 
belief but with the unbelief of James. How 
was it that a good man, a man so good that 
after all that had happened the apostles made 
him the head of the church in Jerusalem, — 
how was it that he lived for thirty years in 
the same house with Jesus, and did not believe 
in Him ? 



THE lord's brother. 185 

When we are told that James and the 
others did not believe in our Lord the meaning 
is not that they doubted His word : that 
would have been impossible. Nor does it 
mean that they did not love Him : of course 
they loved Him. What it means is that they 
did not approve of Him. They did not like 
the things which He said and did. And we 
may properly remember that in this they 
agreed with the most eminent and the most 
pious persons of that day. You recollect what 
our Lord's own friends and neighbors did in 
His own town after He had preached in their 
synagogue. They rose up. these good folk 
who had known Him well for a generation, 
since they were boys together, and proposed 
to throw Him over the side of the hill. The 
mind of James was the same mind as that of 
the Nazareth rabbi. Everybody whom James 
knew, with but few exceptions, thought that 
his brother was an objectionable person. 

That may have made no impression upon 
James, He had suflBcient reason, as it seemed, 
in his own convictions. For we know James : 
we know what sort of man he was. The fact 
that he acted as presiding officer at the 
apostolic conference before which Paul ap- 
peared shows that he had a strong personality, 
that he inspired others with respect, that he 



186 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

had a dignified and commanding manner. He 
decided the debate in favor of Paul ; that is, 
he declared on behalf of the apostles that 
Gentiles should be admitted to membership in 
the Christian Church without being compelled 
to keep the Jewish law. But the debate con- 
tinued after the conference adjourned. It was 
a question of tremendous importance. The 
settlement of it defined the position of the 
followers of Jesus Christ, whether they were a 
Jewish sect, or an independent company of 
new believers. And James personally held 
the Jewish opinion. The life of Paul was 
made miserable by men who followed him on 
his journeys and opposed his liberal teachings, 
and of these men it is significantly said that 
they came from James. Moreover, an ancient 
and credible tradition asserts that James to 
the end of his life kept the old law to the 
smallest particular. He attended the services 
of the temple and of the synagogue with 
devout punctuality. He was a Christian, and 
the head of the Christian Church in the place 
of its beginning, but he was at the same time 
a Jew. 

That is, James, with all his natural good- 
ness, was a precise, formal, and legalistic per- 
son. That was his temperament. He must 
have been like that even in his youth. He 



187 

was of course brought up to keep the common 
law, and to mind the rubrics, and to follow 
the manifold regulations of an artificial and 
mechanical religion. That was the best train- 
ing which Joseph and Mary, good church peo- 
ple, knew how to give. And James liked it. 
That was the sort of thing in which he found 
delight. 

Jesus, on the other hand, liked it not at all. 
Nobody ever lived whose religion was more 
natural, more free, more unconventional. The 
difference, there in Nazareth, between the re- 
liction of James and the reliction of Jesus was 
like the difference between a dimly lighted 
room whose air is heavy with incense and the 
top of a high hill where the wind blows in 
the trees. And the consequence was, to put 
it with all frankness, that Jesus shocked James 
every day. The Lord's way of looking at 
things scandalized the Lord's brother. Indeed, 
as we have seen, it distressed the whole family. 

Then when He came out and said in public 
what He had long said in private, when He 
confronted and contradicted and defied the 
social ideal and the ecclesiastical ideal of His 
day, anybody can see how James felt. Every 
impulse of his precise nature resented this free 
handling of matters ancient, settled and ven- 
erable. Jesus associated freely with publicans 



188 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

and sinners : He dined at a publican's table, 
and took the publican into the company of 
the twelve apostles. James would have cut 
off three fingers rather than do a thing like 
that. Jesus disregarded many of the common 
regulations, paid no heed to the ceremonial 
worship about which His fellow churchmen 
were so punctilious, and said with all plainness 
that it mattered little what men ate ; a Jew 
might eat pork if he chose ; the thing that 
really mattered was not the food which went 
into a man's mouth but the words which came 
out. It is utterly impossible for us to under- 
stand how deeply that offended James. It 
contradicted his most sacred prejudices. 

I suppose that Mary and Martha found that 
it was hard for them to live together in per- 
fect peace : Martha with her active, bustling, 
housewifely ways, "cumbered," as the book 
says, " with much serving " ; and Mary with 
her leisurely habit of dreaming in the day- 
time. They were very different. It is to be 
remembered for our admonition that Martha 
was the one who made complaint. We may 
be equally sure that at J^azareth the com- 
plaints came from James. How much more 
real is it to us, and closer to our common life, 
than if they had all been perfectly serene 
saints. How it illuminates that hard saying 



THE lord's brother. 189 

in which we are told that our Lord was 
tempted in all things like as we are. They 
who find the art of living with others the 
most diflBicult of arts may profitably remember 
that our Lord encountered its difficulty in His 
experience with His brother James. 

So they lived together and apart, and the 
crucifixion came, and the resurrection, and the 
Lord was seen of James. He sought out 
James. There He stood holding out His 
blessed hands of reconciliation and affection. 
And James, — we doubt not, — James the pre- 
cise, the conventional, the conservative, the 
formal, fell down upon his knees before Him. 
Even so, his nature was not changed. He 
was converted, but not transformed. Conver- 
sion may be a speedy process, as quick as turn- 
ing round ; but transformation takes a longer 
time, and comes only by prayer and patience. 
It is not likely that James ever understood 
Jesus. The formalist has always found Him 
hard to understand. He was of the same 
temperament still, a dry, punctilious, precise 
person. But thenceforward James was a 
Christian. He was a devoted disciple of Him 
in whom he now recognized an elder brother, 
in all senses, human and divine. The Lord 
appeared to him, and blessed him, and took 
him just as he was into His confidence. 



190 THE HUMAN ISTATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

James is the type of extreme propriety. In 
the middle ages he was a schoolman, pro- 
foundly interested in microscopic distinctions 
of doctrine, an enemy of heretics. In the six- 
teenth century he came to Massachusetts, 
wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a wide 
white collar, and laid down the law of the 
Sabbath. He was the patron saint of the 
eighteenth century moralists. Whatever is 
unconventional in manner, in expression, in 
belief, in ritual, offends him still. He is easily 
shocked. He cannot help it. He is not at 
present a popular person, for ours is an uncon- 
ventional generation, demanding freedom and 
delighting in it, and liking the new better 
than the old. We are resentful of precision. 

Let us remember that the Lord took partic- 
ular pains to bring James into the Christian 
company. He was seen of James, in a per- 
sonal conference. He knew that the church 
had need of just that conservative, slow, 
cautious, and precise spirit which James repre- 
sented. There was need of freedom, and 
enthusiasm, and boldness, and the radical 
mind : St. Paul stood for all that. But St. 
James also had his place, and has it still. Let 
us be very respectful to St. James ; disagree- 
ing with him at many points, but recognizing 
and humbly imitating his profound earnest- 



THE lord's brother. 191 

ness, the strength of his conviction, his 
serious mind, and the goodness of his life, re- 
membering the courtesy and consideration of 
the risen Christ. 



ONE FROM TEN. 

And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, 
turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell 
down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks. — Luke 
17 : 15. 

JSTiiSTE men went straight on. Out of the 
ten only one turned back to say, " I thank 
you." 

The ten had been deserted of all men. 
They had been forbidden to live any longer 
in the society of their friends. They had 
been commanded to cry " Unclean ! unclean ! " 
when they saw anybody coming their way ; 
warning the passer-by, that he might take the 
other side of the road. They were under the 
ban. Both the priest and the doctor were 
against them. That is, the two persons to 
whom the sick and distressed turn naturally 
for comfort, they whose whole existence is for 
the purpose of ministering to their neiglibors in 
disease and pain, had shut their doors against 
such folk as these. There they were in the 
streets, forlorn and friendless. And thus for- 
saken of all men, thrust out by all men, these 
ten had consorted together, and had associated 

192 



ONE FROM TEN. 193 

themselves into a society of common sorrow, 
a fraternity of desolation — ten outcasts, ten 
beggars, ten lepers. 

Then one day, the ten beheld across a field 
one of whom they had heard that He was the 
friend of those who had no friends, — the 
friend of publicans, and of sinners, and even 
of lepers. He was the friend of lepers. 
He had been known once to show some 
kindness to a leper. Some said that it had 
happened more than once. He had actually 
put out His hand and touched a leper. This 
new teacher, of whom many strange things 
were reported, had touched a leper and healed 
him. It seemed incredible — not that He 
should heal him, but that He should touch him 
with His hand. 

And then He came along the road, and the 
ten saw Him. The lepers saw the friend of 
lepers. And they joined their pitiful voices 
in a cry to Him that He would touch them 
also, and heal them : " Jesus, Master, have 
mercy on us ! " And He stopped, and did have 
mercy on them. He sent them to show them- 
selves to the priests. And it came to pass that 
as they went they were cleansed. Then it was 
that nine of them went straight on : out of the 
ten only one turned back to thank the healer. 

The nine went on to take up their old life 



194 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

again. Step by step, along the way, as the 
bonds of their leprosy were loosed, a new 
strength came into their arms, a new light 
shone in their faces, and a new hope lifted up 
their hearts. I cannot think that they were 
altogether ungrateful persons. That is not 
human nature. They could not have looked 
into the unexpected future which was thus 
opening before them, and into which they were 
going as one goes out of bondage into freedom, 
without a memory of Him who had made that 
future possible, and a deeply grateful memory. 
Jesus had not passed out of their thoughts. 
That is quite unlikely. 

The men were not ungrateful. They were 
only silent. They were grateful enough in 
their hearts ; they were singing and making 
melody in their hearts. But nobody would 
have known it, for no note of the songs got 
into their lips. 

This was partly because they knew not what 
to say. Of all emotions, joy is the most diflBcult 
to bring into speech. Sorrow seeks expres- 
sion. Think of the notable scenes in which 
the masters of fiction have pictured the crisis 
of human life. The best are the pathetic and 
the tragic. Gratitude is especially hard to 
utter. It eludes the pen and the tongue. It 
can be seen in the eyes, but it rarely finds 



OITE FROM TEIT. 195 

adequate expression. We try in vain to say- 
all that we feel. There is much more grati- 
tude and appreciation in the world than we 
get credit for. If we should ever outgrow 
spoken language and for words substitute 
thoughts, so that conversation should be car- 
ried on without words as communication is al- 
ready effected without wires, and mind should 
speak with mind, there would be no difficulty 
about thanksgiving. There are few emotions 
that would gain more in power of expression. 
Everybody who is good to us will know in that 
day just how appreciative we are. 

This, however, wa^ not the chief reason for 
the silence of the men who gave no thanks. 
They might have said something. It is not 
likely that the one who turned back was very 
eloquent : he probably stammered and stum- 
bled in his speech. They might, at least, have 
fallen at the Master's feet, and thus even in 
silence have assured Him that their hearts 
were full of affection and of adoration. The 
trouble was not so much that they did not 
know what to say, as that they did not con- 
sider that they needed to say anything. They 
did not think that He who had blessed them 
cared whether they showed their gratitude 
or not. He did care. His instant question, 
" Where are the nine ? " makes that plain. 



196 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

It is true that the gratitude which He sought 
and missed was not for Himself. " There are 
not found that returned to give glory to God 
save this stranger." It was God to whom He 
would have the glory given. If, however, 
there were no more to it than that, it is hard 
to see wherein the nine failed. They went on 
to the priests; that is, to the temple, where 
the priests performed their offices. What bet- 
ter place could they have chosen for the gift 
of their gratitude to God ! There in that hal- 
lowed sanctuary, in the appointed services and 
with the appointed offerings, let them give 
God the glory. Was not that the natural and 
proper thing to do ? On they go along the 
road, obeying Christ's command ; and as they 
go, with every step, their leprosy is cleansed ; 
and there they are, well men. Then they stop 
and consult together, companions now in great 
joy as they had been companions in distress ; 
and one says, What shall we do ? Shall we not 
go back and thank Him ? and another says, 
" No, we are doing as He told us, we are going 
to the priests. Let us give God the glory. 
Let us kneel before His altar in His house." 
And to this they all agree save one, and he, 
curiously enough is a Samaritan ; that is, he is 
a person who is out of accord with priests. It 
is notorious that the Jews have no dealings 



i 



OJS^E FROM TEN. 197 

with the Samaritans. The fact that this Sa- 
maritan was of the number of these ten shows 
that their misery was so great that it over- 
balanced all their natural prejudices. Nine 
Jews in sound health would not have tolerated 
the company of a Samaritan. Indeed, as they 
got better they may have begun to look askance 
at the stranger with whom in their affliction 
they had fraternized. Anyhow, the priest 
had nothing for him. The others might go on 
to kneel before the altar in the temple, he 
would go back to kneel in the dust by the side 
of the road, and to offer his thanksgivings in 
the presence of Him who had healed him. 
And this was what Jesus wanted. The man 
came, and glorfied God, but in his gift of 
praise to God there was a human, personal 
element. He glorified God, the gospel tells 
us, but he fell down on his face at Jesus' feet, 
and gave Jesus thanks. And Jesus liked that. 

He liked the simple courtesy of it. He 
showed on several occasions that He set a high 
value on good manners. It made a difference 
to Him whether or not He was treated with 
the consideration which is rightly due from 
host to guest. He saw in little things symbols 
of large realities. It pleased Him to have af- 
fection and regard expressed in gentle ways. 

And He liked the straightforward directness 



198 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

of it. The man was honestly grateful and he 
came and said so. And in that act he gave 
Christ pleasure. That is the fact to which the 
narrative bears witness, and which we ought 
especially to consider as we read about it on 
such a day as this. It is natural for us to 
think of the saying of prayers and the singing 
of praises from the point of view of our own 
selves. But our Lord's pleasure in this man's 
frank gratitude reminds us that there is an- 
other and divine side to all this. He who by 
precept and by example reveals to us the na- 
ture and will of the Eternal, teaches us here 
and elsewhere that God cares : that God has 
pleasure in our prayers and in our praises : 
that therein we render some small return to 
Him for all the joy with which He fills our 
lives. 

We do thank God for most of the uncom- 
mon blessings. A sudden danger, a sharp 
sickness, brings us so close to the great reali- 
ties that God seems nearer to us than usual. 
When the danger is passed, or the crisis of the 
disease is reached and safely turned, we think 
of God, and the grateful feelings of our heart 
find expression at our lips. 

But we ought to thank God also for all the 
daily blessings, for our health, friends, food 
and raiment, and all the other comforts and 



OXE FROM TEN. 199 

conveniences of life, for all the manifold mer- 
cies and loving kindnesses of Him from whom 
Cometh every good and perfect gift. Christ 
taught the truth, which was long obscured, but 
in our day is emphasized by clearer knowledge 
of the world of nature, that our heavenly 
Father is forever present in the world and for- 
ever active in it. We call the laws of nature 
by appropriate Latin names, and are tempted 
to imagine that we understand them because 
we have thus named them. But so are the 
mountains of the moon named. So are the 
fixed stars named. So is radium, the latest of 
the mysteries, given a name. Behind them all 
is God. What we call natural law is but 
God's customary way. 

The Hebrews were very wise in their poetic 
and religious histories, wherein they ascribed 
all things to God's direct action. If the army 
lost the battle, God had turned His face against 
that army. If the rain descended and the 
wind blew, God was in the wind and in the 
rain. It was all profoundly true. God is in 
all the experiences of common life. All is of 
Him, in whom our life is lived. 

Thus the homeliest blessings come from the 
Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. 
We ought to be thankful to Him for them all . 
for all the smallest joys of a good year ; for 



200 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

the divine protection ; for our prosperity ; for 
the fact that we are alive to-day, and able to 
be here in the house of God ; for our escape 
from a hundred ills which we feared as the 
weeks passed, but which did not fall upon us ; 
for innumerable and blessed assistances in 
temptation, by reason of which we are no worse 
than we are, thank God ; for daily joys past 
counting up. Praise and thanksgiving be to 
God who has poured His benefits upon us, in 
our own individual lives. 

Then we remember the blessings which we 
share with those nearest to us, in the family. 
Thanksgiving Day has a distinctively domestic 
meaning. It is the festival of the family. It 
cannot be satisfactorily observed in a hotel, or 
in most boarding houses, or by anybody who 
sits alone at dinner. It needs children and 
relatives, to fill it with the proper cheer ; or 
the presence of dear friends. It is the home- 
liest of our days of observation, — homeliest in 
the best sense of that word, as being sacred to 
the home, as recalling the time when people 
thought that God had His dwelling in their 
home, with the hearth for His shrine and altar, 
and the fire blazing upon it in His sacred 
honor: and were right about it. To-day we 
worship the God of the household, returning 
to the simple faith of those remote ancestors 



ONE FROM TEir. 201 

of ours who lived when every father was a 
priest and every meal a sacrament. To-day 
we consider with gratitude the protection of 
God, the good guidance of God, the love of 
God who is the Father of us all, revealed to us 
in so many ways under our own roof. Praise 
and thanksgiving be to Him who, during this 
past year has poured His benefits upon us in 
our homes. 

This is the most ancient of all our holy days. 
It is true that it had its specific beginning in 
the experiences of our ancestors here upon 
these shores early in the seventeenth century. 
But it antedates the passover : it precedes the 
pyramids ; it is before history, even before 
civilization. It had its origin in the instincts 
of primeval man, and was celebrated at the 
gate of Eden. Thanksgiving Day is the most 
ancient and the most universal of all our 
festivals. Therein our calendar agrees with 
the sacred year of every religion. All men 
everywhere in this time of harvest have met 
together throughout all ages, and are still 
meeting for the purpose which assembles us 
to-day, to give thanks to God for the ingather- 
ing of the fruits of the earth. For us who go 
back and forth about our business over paved 
streets the agricultural aspects of this day are 
in the remote background of our thoughts. 



202 THE HUMAN NATUKE OF THE SAINTS. 

We try to return to the sturdy joy of our 
grandparents, to whom the harvest was a 
personal experience, and it is like the difference 
between the symbolic sheaves with which we 
deck the altar and the real sheaves, acre on 
acre, golden in the sun, silver in the harvest 
moon, shining in the fields. But the harvest 
is essential : let us remember that. We can- 
not live without it. To-day we praise the 
Lord for the kindly fruits of the earth, for 
the labors of the husbandman wherein he is a 
fellow laborer with God, for fire and heat, for 
frost and cold, for the succession of the seasons, 
and all the divine elemental forces. O, let 
the earth bless the Lord : yea, let it praise 
Him and magnify Him forever. 

Finally, as good citizens, we give God 
thanks for all the large mercies of the j^ear, 
national and international, seeing God's great 
working there; sometimes understanding it 
and sometimes not, but conscious, nevertheless, 
and through all, of His abiding presence, of 
His patient dealing with the human will. We 
perceive, as we review the year, that little by 
little, swinging back yet coming on like the 
rising tide, the kingdom of heaven invades the 
world and slowly — very slowly, but surely, — 
takes possession of it. Thank God for that, 
and for all the good men and women, who, in 



ONE FROM TEN". 203 

the face of difficulty and defeat, in our huge 
misgoverned cities, in our deserted villages, in 
the perplexities of our vast problems, are bring- 
ing the good causes forward, in His name. 
It is His world ; that is the truth which makes 
thanksgiving reasonable. It is His world, 
made by Him, redeemed by Him, sanctified by 
Him, growing year by year to fill the measure 
of His plan. The movement of the nations 
is like the flight of the birds, in spring and 
fall — voluntary, yet divinely guided. And as 
we behold it, as we feel the thrill of it in our 
own experience, we praise God : saying no 
longer. The Lord liveth which brought up the 
children of Israel out of the land of Egypt ; 
but the Lord liveth which brought up and 
which led our fathers to the shores of this new 
continent, and here established them a nation, 
and here prospered them and made them a 
great people ; the Lord liveth who to-day in 
every land, in peace and in war, is guiding the 
peoples of the earth. 

O ye children of men, bless je the Lord. 
O ye servants of the Lord, bless ye the Lord. 
O ye holj and humble men of heart, bless ye 
the Lord, praise His name, come before Him 
with thanksgiving, magnify Him forever. 



SAINTS m SUMMER. 

Thon hast set all the borders of the earth ; Thou hast made 
summer. — Fs. 74 : 18. 

Let us consider now some of the elements 
of a Christian vacation. 

The first is recreation. The meaning of 
recreation is written plain in the word itself. 
It is that which recreates us, giving us a clearer 
mind and a stronger body. Simple rest goes 
far towards doing that. To escape from our 
anxieties, to put our work behind us, to get out 
of hearing of the importunate demands which 
prevent our peace, is both helpful and neces- 
sary. We ought to do it. It need not be a 
selfish act. It is for our good in order that it 
may be for the general good. It is not merely 
for his own sake that the teacher, the minister 
or the merchant takes a vacation ; it is also for 
the sake of the school, the parish, and the busi- 
ness, all of which need a man at bis best. 

Indeed, there is a selfishness of self sacrifice. 
Here is one who works and works for the sake 
of a family, or of a community, or of a cause, 
reaching the limit of his natural strength and 
going consciously beyond it, and then breaks 
'204 



SAIKTS IN SUMMER. 205 

down, falls into some sort of sickness. That is 
the poorest kind of social or spiritual economy. 
The work which ought to have gone on, stops ; 
and even before it stops, it is done inefficiently ; 
the worker has no strength nor spirit for it. 
It looks like self-sacrifice. People say. He 
gave himself for the good of others. Some- 
times that is true. Sometimes, under condi- 
tions which leave no choice, it is the sincerest 
self-sacrifice. But commonly, it is the sacrifice 
of the work as well as of the worker. A 
recognition of the value of rest, a reservation 
of strength for future use, a wise intermin- 
gling of pleasure and play with the earnest oc- 
cupations of life, will enable the prudent worker 
to go on day after day, and year after year. 
Charlemagne went to bed regularly at noon 
and slept for an hour, and still had time to ad- 
minister the affairs of the whole civilized so- 
ciety of his day : there are mothers of small 
families who feel that the demands upon them 
are so great that they cannot take such rest as 
that. The truth is that both the mothers and 
the families would be the happier for it. 

This is the meaning of the fourth command- 
ment. It is the divine announcement of the 
necessity of rest. Once a week, the com- 
mandment says, stop work. Take a good rest, 
you and your wife, and your family, and all 



206 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

the members of your household. The Sabbath 
rest, it is true, came to be so interpreted as to 
make the rest day not only the dullest but the 
most difficult day of the week. But that was 
the fault of the interpreters ; there is nothing 
of it in the commandment. It is the word of 
the considerate father of the family of man, 
who would not have school keep all the week, 
nor the mills run from Monday morning round 
to Monday morning. You will be tempted, 
the message meant, to take life quite too seri- 
ously, and to work too hard and too long. 
Don't do it. Enjoy yourselves. Bring the 
element of recreation into your life. Establish 
and maintain holidays, holy to God and to 
man, in which you may be freely and blessedly 
idle. 

This is also the meaning of our Lord's sum- 
mons to the apostles, " Come ye yourselves 
apart into a desert place, and rest awhile." 
They were so busy that they could not be al- 
lowed to go on without danger to themselves 
and to their work. Stop it, then, at once ; 
and come, let us go a-rowing on the lake, let 
us get into the neighborhood of the cool 
breezes. On the further shore are trees and 
grass, and the waves are playing with the 
rocks, and there are no people : there let us lie 
down in the shade and rest. 



SAIITTS IN SUMMER. 207 

We will do that, this summer. We will 
enter with all our hearts into the honest, inno- 
cent joys of outdoor life. We will have a 
good time, in the name of God. We will not 
be ashamed of it, nor make apologies for it. 
We will rejoice in it, as children of our Father 
in heaven. 

The second element of a Christian vacation 
is appreciation. Appreciation, I mean, of that 
out-of-door world in which a holiday is properly 
spent. It is God's world, more directly and en- 
tirely than that environment of buildings and 
of books in which we pass so much of our 
time. To see it aright is, in a deep sense, to 
see God. To delight in it is to delight in God. 
To enter into it with sympathy and apprecia- 
tion is to enter into the realized presence of 
God. 

** For I have learned 
To look on nature, not as in the hour 
Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes 
The still, sad. music of humanity, 
Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power 
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky. and in the mind of man ; 
A motion and a spirit that impels 



208 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still 
A lover of the meadows and the woods 
And mountains ; and of all that we behold 
From this green earth ; of all the mighty world 
Of eye and ear, — both what they half create 
And what perceive ; well pleased to recognize 
In nature and the language of the sense 
The author of my purest thoughts, the muse. 
The guide, the guardian of my heart, the soul 
Of all my moral being. ' ' 

That is what we need, an appreciation of 
the moral significance of nature, a delight in 
it as the gift of God, as the revelation of God, 
as the visible manifestation of God. 

Our love of God has sometimes a self-con- 
sciousness about it which takes away its joy. 
We put upon ourselves a kind of compulsion to 
love God. We set about the act of realizing 
God and loving God as if it were a task. 
This is largely because we associate God with 
only a part of life, with prayers and churches. 
God is in all life. We need not urge ourselves 
into artificial affection for Him. What He 
wants is the love which children give their 
parents, about which they do not reason nor 
examine themselves, but which is natural, in- 
stinctive, spontaneous. Let us live in the 
natural world as in the house of God, our 
Father. Let us see in the beauty of it, in its 



SAIJSTTS IN SUMMER. 209 

forms and colors, in its changing lights, in its 
adaptation to our needs, the loving providence 
of God, who careth for us. Let us understand 
that to enjoy it is to love God. To look out 
across the lake at the procession of the hills, 
to watch the moving clouds by day and the 
moving stars by night, to walk beside the 
water, to sail over it, to plunge under it, to 
delight in the saltness and the coolness of the 
sea, to sit under the shadows of the great trees, 
and just to think that all this is given to us by 
the hand of God, is to grow in grace, and in 
the knowledge and the love of God. Let us 
not anxiously ask ourselves whether we love 
God. Let us give ourselves up to His blessed 
presence, whom the heavens declare, and the 
firmament showeth His handiwork. Let us 
take it, and be glad of it, going out into it with 
a sense of possession, as the children of God, 
enjoying ourselves in our Father's house. Let 
us read in it as in a book of devotion, — the 
Bible of the hills and skies, written by God's 
hand. Let us listen in the stillness to the 
anthem of the waters and the fields : O all ye 
works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord. Praise 
Him and magnify Him forever. 

The third element of a Christian vacation is 
reflection. The summer is a time for quiet 
thinking. All the rest of the year we are sub- 



210 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

ject to interruption. We have, indeed, that 
stimulus to thought which comes from the im- 
perative demand of the immediate moment. 
The word must be said, the thing must be done, 
and we are compelled to think it out. But in 
order that we may say the right word, and do 
the right thing, the thought of the moment 
must be based upon a strong foundation of 
serious and continued thinking. And in the 
summer, if we are wise, we will lay such a 
foundation. We will apply ourselves in these 
long days of peace to the consideration of 
great principles. We will read great books. 
We will lay up in stock a store of strength 
against the coming year. 

For example, it is excellent to spend a sum- 
mer in the reading of history. Take one of 
the long histories — Gibbon, Froude, Gardiner, 
Green, Parkman, Motley, Fiske — and read it 
through. It is significant that so large a part 
of the Bible is occupied by books of history. 
It means that through history we come to a 
knowledge of God. We see God in the world 
of human society, and we are thus prepared to 
see God with like plainness in our contempo- 
rary annals, in the events which are recorded in 
the daily newspapers. Much that we read 
there needs the background of the past for its 
interpretation. The continual experience of 



I 



SAINTS IN SUMMER. 211 

the people of Israel was uplifted and dignified 
by being thus kept in living relation with the 
old time. Every common day had its place in 
that splendid history. And the whole history 
from first to last was ennobled and illuminated 
by the consciousness of God. The annals of 
Israel were different from those of other na- 
tions, but a great part of the difference was in 
the spirit in w^hich they were written. The 
historians of Israel were aware of the presence 
of God in all the facts of human life. If the 
summer can bring us into that same conscious- 
ness of the divine in the life of our own age, 
and in the progress of our own community it 
will be a Christian summer. 

Excellent, also, is the reading of poetry, of 
great poetry. How long is it since we read 
the "Iliad," or the "Divine Comedy," or the 
tragedies of Shakespeare, or the Book of Job, 
or "Paradise Lost," or the "Ring and the 
Book " ? For most of us, these are undertak- 
ings too vast for our busy days. The summer 
gives us opportunity for such high privileges. 
Let us take a poet with us into our country 
home, and give him the freedom of the hearth 
and of the fields, and listen to all he has to 
say. Let us read the whole range of his verse, 
till we get into the heart of his heart, and be- 
hold the world out of his eyes, or better out of 



212 THE HUMAT^ NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

our own eyes, taught by him to see. Part of 
the time we will look at the page, part of the 
time we will look at the sky and at the hills, 
till the new heaven and the new earth begin 
to shine about us. 

Or the summer may be used for the work- 
ing out of some problem, some question of 
ethics or of belief, some deep and weighty 
matter of which we find ourselves more igno- 
rant than we ought to be. We will take it, 
and think about it. We will carry it with us 
into the woods, or over the water, or among the 
high mountains, and there meditate upon it with 
that quietness of spirit and clearness of vision 
which the clamor and confusion of the im- 
portunate months obstruct but which are 
among the most precious blessings of the 
summer. 

I have spoken now of three elements of a 
Christian vacation, — recreation, appreciation 
and reflection. A fourth element is devotion. 
By this I mean the religious life as it is re- 
lated to the services and institutions of the 
church. The privileges of the church are to 
the Christian what the privileges of art are to 
the artist, and of music to the musician. They 
are the thing that he wants. Accordingly, the 
Christian in choosing a place in which to 
spend the summer will take the religious op- 



SAII^TS IN SUMMER. 213 

portunities into account. It is not necessary 
to say to the good Christian that he ought to 
go to church in the country. He will go, not 
because he ought, but because he desires to go. 
It is his pleasure and profit. To those who 
call themselves Christians, however, and are 
not so good Christians as they should be, it 
needs to be said that church-going in the 
country even more than in the city is a social 
duty, and that they who neglect it harm their 
neighbors. The Church in the country suf- 
fers greatly from vicious division, and loses 
thereby in dignity, and in effectiveness. 
Nevertheless, it is one of the agencies — and 
the most potent of all the agencies — for the 
uplifting of the community. The country min- 
ister in most instances is a faithful man who 
is laboring at much self-sacrifice for the good 
of the people. The privileged folk who come 
from the great churches of the cities will 
either help or hinder him. If they are honest 
Christian people, they will help him. They 
will understand that their simple presence at 
the services encourages both the minister and 
the congregation. It is a small thing to do, 
at the beginning of a week of leisure and 
pleasure, to spend a Sunday morning in the 
village church. It may not be a beautiful 
church, and neither the praying nor the 



214 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

preaching may be very good, measured by the 
standards of polite society. But He is there 
who promised His blessed presence wherever 
two or three are met together in His name ; 
and the devout soul will recognize Him and 
rejoice in Him. There will be a benediction in 
the summer stillness, and the bare walls will 
shine with celestial pictures, and in the voice 
of the minister He will speak, who cares little 
for enticing words of man's wisdom but en- 
trusts His messages to holy and humble men 
of heart. The worshiper will get good as 
well as do good. Suppose, however, that he 
does not get much good, then let him go to 
church as an intelligent and right-minded 
citizen, performing an act of courtesy, of 
social politeness, of considerate and gracious 
good manners, of decent interest in the wel- 
fare of one's neighbors. 

These reflections upon the Christian and 
social duty of church-going in the country are 
applicable even when the church is not one of 
our kind. It is natural and right that we 
should prefer the service as it is in the prayer- 
book. The religious exercises of our Prot- 
estant neighbors, wherein the sermon is of 
chief importance and is preceded and followed 
by extemporary prayer, seems to us cold and 
unsatisfying : we cannot help it. We crave 



SAINTS IN SUMMEK. 215 

the richness, the variety, the warmth, the holy 
associations, the uplift and impulse of a service 
in which the instinct of worship is recognized 
and given utterance. But we are not very 
good Christians if we are so dependent on the 
forms of the service that we cannot get along 
without them. And we are very childish and 
foolish and narrow and unchristian Christians 
if we cannot kneel with our Christian brethren 
of whatever name and join them in approach- 
ing our common Father. Partisanship is very 
well, if one belongs to the right party, and 
pays an honest allegiance to it : but patriotism 
is a thousandfold better. Churchmanship is 
very well, but Christianity is the essential 
thing. Above all religious organizations is 
that universal church over which no pope nor 
bishop rules, and which no society is old 
enough nor wide enough to contain. As 
churchmen, we will go to "the church," as 
we say, if we can find it ; but as Christians, 
we will go anywhere, under whatever roof, 
into whatever service, Roman Catholic, Bap- 
tist, Unitarian, Quaker, — it matters not, where 
we can find God worshiped in any way, and 
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, loved and fol- 
lowed. The only religious society which is to 
be carefully avoided by all churchmen and 
Christians is the Ancient Order of Pharisees. 



216 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

The churchman who stays at home on Sunday 
because there is no other house of worship in 
the village but the Methodist may suddenly 
find himself a member in good and regular 
standing of the Ancient Order of Pharisees. 

Recreation, appreciation, reflection, and de- 
votion will admit us into the high privilege of 
a Christian summer. Out of such a vacation, 
spent in the society of nature, of noble books, 
of our neighbors and of God, we ought to 
come back strong and sound to resume our 
work and do it better. May God bless it to 
our needs, the happiness of it, the health of it, 
the occupations of it, all its days of sun and 
of storm, all its experiences. May He thereby 
make us better men and women, better Chris- 
tians, wiser and happier and holier. Let us 
not say by and by in the words of the prophet, 
" The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and 
we are not saved." Let us rather say in the 
words of the psalmist, '' Thy righteousness 
standeth like the strong mountains : Th}^ judg- 
ments are like the great deep." "Holy, holy, 
holy. Lord God Almighty, heaven and earth 
are full of Thy glory. Glory be to Thee, O 
Lord Most High." 



THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED. 

One of His disciples, whom Jesus loved. — John 13: 23. 

St. Joh]^ the apostle stood at the top of a 
profession in which all good people are en- 
gaged. He was a saint ; to which excellent 
estate we are all called. It may well be of 
interest and profit to us, disciples like him of 
the Lord Jesus, and members as he was of the 
Brotherhood and Sisterhood of the Blessed 
Life, to consider how this our neighbor, who 
in his boyhood caught fish for a living in the 
Lake of Galilee, became so eminent a person. 
Think of it! a sun-browned fisherman, who 
plied his homely trade in the waters of a 
Syrian pond, has gained a name greater than 
that of Alexander or of Caesar. In countless 
cities, under all the skies of the planet, conse- 
crated buildings, costly and beautiful, bear 
his name. For now these many centuries, 
words of his writings have stirred the hearts of 
the best men and women of the world, and 
have been an encouragement in defeat, a com- 
fort in trouble, a shield and spear in spiritual 
conflict, an enrichment of life, a fountain of 
pure joy. Add together the intellectual and 

217 



218 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

moral achievements of Aristotle and of Plato ; 
yes, and of all the philosophers beside who 
ever wrote in any language ; and the result of 
all the good they ever did, of all the change 
they ever wrought in man's believing or be- 
having, will not compare for a moment with 
the contribution w^hich this fisherman has 
made to the best wealth of the world. For 
the sources of our Christian faith are plainly 
these : first, the life of Jesus Christ ; secondly, 
the interpretations of His life. The story of 
what He did and said is set down plainly in 
the first three gospels: the meaning of it is 
declared by St. John and by St. Paul : by St. 
Paul, the apostle of the atonement, and by St. 
John, the apostle of the incarnation. St. 
John does not tell the Christmas story : his 
account of our Lord begins with the baptism. 
But it is from him chiefly that we learn the 
supreme truth with which the Fourth Gospel 
opens, that the Word was God and was made 
flesh. He it was, with St. Paul, who per- 
ceived God in Christ, and taught men so. 
How did he do it ? How did it come to pass ? 
How did John of Bethsaida, fish vender, grow 
up into the beloved disciple, St. John the 
Divine ? 

The father of John was Zebedee ; his mother 
was Salome. We are not told much about 



THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED. 219 

either of them : of his father, very little, in- 
deed. He was a fisherman, with some small 
means, — a master fisherman, having men in 
his employ. He seems to have owned a house 
in Jerusalem, to which after the tragedy of 
the crucifixion, John took the Virgin Mother. 
His wife, probably after his death, is said to 
have ministered unto Jesus of her substance. 
It is plain, however, that he was by no means 
rich : at least, he was not so rich but that he 
worked with his hands, pulling at oars and 
sails and nets. The only clear look we 
get at him shows him with his sons and his 
hired men, a sturdy, sunburned person, with 
a fisherman's needle in his hands, busy at the 
common task. We see enough to know that 
he was industrious and frugal, of a practical 
habit, not impulsive, not given to dreaming in 
the daytime, nor enthusiastic, nor even hos- 
pitable towards new ideas, intent upon the 
lake and the weather, the nets and the fish, 
going steadily to and fro, day after day, be- 
tween his house and his boat. 

When Jesus came and called his two sons, 
he sat silent, not offering to go himself, yet 
opposing no hindrance to their going. The 
sentence in the gospel, " Then came to Him 
the mother of Zebedee's children with her 
sons," has been used as a text for a sermon in- 



220 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

tended for men who do not go to church, be- 
ginning, " But where w^as Zebedee ? " Yarious 
reasons are assigned for Zebedee's absence. 
It is altogether likely that by that time Zebe- 
dee was dead. Still, the fact remains that 
while his wife was deeply interested in relig- 
ion, and his sons devoted themselves to it, 
Zebedee himself appears to have gone on 
about his ordinary business. He stayed at 
home, and attended to the fishing. 

Salome, it is thought, was a sister of the 
mother of our Lord : for St. John says that in 
the group of women by the cross of Jesus was 
"His mother's sister," and St. Matthew, de- 
scribing the same group, speaks of the 
"mother of Zebedee's children." If so, she 
belonged to a family which was naturally 
religious, and spent her girlhood in the com- 
pany of one whose thoughts and words and 
life must have been constantly devout and up- 
lifted. That she afterwards devoted herself 
to the service of her nephew, and attended 
Him wherever He went that she might min- 
ister to Him not only gives us a new sight of 
the homely domestic relationships of the life 
of Jesus, but serves also to bear witness to her 
ardent spirit. There was probably a good 
deal of external contrast between Zebedee and 
Salome. That unlikeness between the father 



THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED. 221 

and the mother, one saying little, the other 
saying much ; one appearing to pay but small 
heed to religion, the other manifestly devout, 
is not uncommon. 

Both father and mother reappear in John. 
He was no leader, like Peter. He was no 
speaker. In the conference at Jerusalem over 
the questions which arose out of Paul's mis- 
sionary experiences he spoke no word, — a quiet, 
silent man, like his father Zebedee. From his 
mother he derived his religious spirit and his 
depth of affection. A certain swiftness of 
temper, a strain of jealousy in his affection, a 
tendency to be so absorbed in a present pur- 
pose as to be careless of the rights of others, 
may also be the mother in the son. For it is 
not only by the direct training of the parents 
that the character of their children is deter- 
mined. The children depend less on what 
their parents do and say than on what their 
parents are. Character goes on from one gen- 
eration to another, now uplifted, now de- 
graded, but inevitably handed down, a heri- 
tage of benediction or of malediction. 

It is not likely that St. John went much to 
school. It is certain that he was quite un- 
trained in the rabbinical philosophy which 
constituted what was then accounted educa- 
tion. He learned to read, and he read much 



222 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

in the greatest book that ever was written, — 
in the Bible. That he had an eager mind is 
evident in all that we know about his life. 
But beyond the most elementary sort of book- 
learning, he got the remainder, and the greater 
part, of his education in the world. 

We make a mistake if we imagine that educa- 
tion consists wholly, or chiefly, in acquaintance 
with printed pages, in the friendship of books. 
He is best educated who knows the world in 
which he lives, and has learned to look with 
sympathy and understanding into the faces of 
his fellow men. The walls of the study im- 
prison the conventional scholar. His horizon is 
bounded by his books and pictures. Supersti- 
tions, prejudices, heresies, narrownesses of va- 
rious kinds, grow in the brain of him who sits 
with his back to the window and his feet to the 
fire, forever reading. John the fisherman, busy 
with his work, under the wide sky, on the 
stormy lake, minding the net and the sail, 
casting for a draught, counting the good fish, 
occupied with his traflic along the wharves of 
Bethsaida and in the fish market of Jerusalem, 
learned lessons of which the dim-eyed scribes 
and Pharisees, studying old books, were alto- 
gether ignorant. 

One would have easily said, however, that this 
fisher lad had but a poor chance at the prizes 



THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED. 223 

of the world. Compare him, for example, with 
other boys, his contemporaries in Bethsaida 
and Capernaum, born in homes of wealth and 
leisure, given manifold daily privileges of edu- 
cation and opportunity. Out of all these lads 
who have their residence within reach of 
the winds which blow across the lake, who shall 
be the best esteemed? who shall be known 
and approved by the most people ? who shall 
take the largest place in the general life ? 
Only the very wise would have pointed to this 
son of Zebedee. 

Wonderful, this subtle difference in the 
destinies of men ! Out of a group of school- 
boys, out of the clerks in an office, out of the 
unending procession in the street, one becomes 
a scholar and enriches the world's store of 
profitable knowledge, or a merchant whose 
ships are in all waters, or a citizen whose public 
service ennobles the community in which he 
lives. The others go on around the corner into 
oblivion. And we wonder why : why did he 
succeed, and make so much of himself ? why 
did his companion fail ? 

In the case of John the fisherman we can 
see one of the reasons. This stout lad with 
the tanned cheeks and arms has a strong long- 
ing in his heart to know the best and be the best 
he can. That is the beginning of difference. 



224 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

Others are content to take the daily haul of 
fish : he is not satisfied with that. He would 
have not only fish but friends. And see these 
friends — young men who stand erect^ with 
nothing mean about them, vigorous, intelli- 
gent, thoughtful, true. James is his brother, 
Andrew and Peter are their partners, Philip is 
of the company, and perhaps Nathaniel of 
Cana. These are John's companions. These, 
in a true sense, are his teachers ; according to 
Emerson's saying, " Send your son to school 
and the boys will teach him." On land or 
water, this group of young men meet every 
day, and their lives go on together into the 
greatest work that was ever given men to do. 
These are his friends : such friends that Jesus 
Christ, choosing only twelve apostles out of 
all the multitude of His disciples, takes these 
six, every man of them. 

But even this did not content John. He 
was not satisfied even with this society of con- 
genial and helpful companions. He was in- 
tent on improving himself, wanted to learn 
more and more, and had an insatiable appetite 
for truth, — for the truth which is the source of 
strength. When he heard of a man who had 
a message, he went to hear him tell it. It 
might be even at a distance, away down the 
valley of the Jordan : nevertheless, when there 



THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED. 225 

was bad weather so that he could not work, or 
when he had sold his fish in the Jerusalem 
market and had a day off in which to look 
about him, straight he would betake himself 
where truth was taught. Thus it was that he 
came to John the Baptist, and found in him a 
better teacher than he had ever heard in the 
synagogues of Capernaum, and was enrolled as 
his disciple. And then one day, as he walked 
with the new master, evidently a favorite 
pupil, there passed along the road One to 
whom the Baptist called attention : " Behold, 
the Lamb of God ! " And immediately the 
fisherman obeyed. The ardent searcher after 
truth followed the new master. He became 
acquainted w^ith Jesus of Nazareth. Became 
acquainted with Him ! He was His neighbor 
and His cousin. Yes, but now of a sudden he 
recognized Him. Thus the true light dawned 
within his soul. 

It was Jesus of Nazareth who lifted this 
young Galilean fisherman above the other men 
of his generation. It was the entrance of this 
ncAV light into his life which made a saint of 
John. But John was on the watch for all the 
good that he could find, for all the truth that 
any man could tell him : that was the begin- 
ning of it. Without that, Jesus might have 
encountered John a hundred times, and never 



226 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

have been recognized. That distance between 
sight and recognition is one of the universal 
distinctions. It was said of our Lord that He 
came unto His own, and His own received Him 
not. The star shone in the Christmas sky 
where everybody could see it, but the wise 
men, strangers from a far country, were the 
only ones who followed it. The lighted lamp 
hung at the door of the stable in Bethlehem, 
and many men and women passed, their long 
shadows reaching to the middle of the road, 
their minds fixed upon their errands great or 
small ; all these passed unheeding, only the 
shepherds entered. And Jesus went about the 
common streets day after day, and was seen 
and heard familiarly of men for several j^ears, 
most of whom looked Him in the face and did 
not know Him. 

That happens every hour. He comes again 
in every opportunity, in every crisis of our joy 
or sorrow, in every call which makes itself 
heard however faintly in the heart of man. 
And there is still the same benediction in His 
presence that there was in Galilee ; the same 
strong hand is held out still to lift us up above 
the lower levels ; to-day He waits, as then, to 
bless us ; to-day He is ready, as ever, to make 
saints out of sinners. As many as receive 
Him, to them gives He power to become the 



THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED. 227 

sons of God. But some are blind and cannot 
see ; some will not see ; to some. His coming 
appears so commonplace, so simple and homely, 
that they do not believe that it is He. They 
only who are looking patiently and eagerly, as 
John was, for knowledge, for betterment, for 
blessing, along the common road, recognize 
Him and gain His benediction. 

But John was no saint yet. He had, indeed, 
become a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth, and 
that was much, but it was only the beginning 
of this new stage of his spiritual journey. 

It is encouraging to see how much the new 
disciple had to learn. We grow disheartened, 
failure multiplies upon us, spiritual defeat be- 
falls us again and again, the ideal seems as- 
tronomically remote, — dim in the immeasure- 
able, even inaccessible, distance. At such 
times, we may profitably note the disadvan- 
tages of temper and of disposition which beset 
the way of John the fisherman. 

Once he met a man who was casting out 
devils in the name of Jesus, and yet belonged 
not to the apostolic company. John forbade 
him sharply. He forbade him to do good, ir- 
regularly. Again, when the people of a village 
in Samaria refused them shelter, John desired 
that fire might descend from heaven and burn 
up the inhospitable people. He wanted to 



228 THE HUMAN NATUEE OF THE SAIJSTTS. 

have them struck by lightning. Again, near 
the close of our Lord's ministry, we have to 
remember against John how he and James 
got their mothers to ask the Master for the 
best places in His kingdom, one on the right 
hand and the other on the left ; leaving the 
lower places for their companions. 

These instances show what manner of man 
he must have been by nature, — jealous, some- 
what narrow-minded, quick of temper, incon- 
siderate of the feelings, even of the rights of 
others, selfish, ambitious. These are not the 
adjectives which are commonly used in articles 
of beatification : they are not a good descrip- 
tion of a saint. Yet this was true of the be- 
loved disciple. All this, little by little, con- 
tending as we must, he put down and under. 
Day by day, fighting against that which was 
unchristian in him and overcoming, he in- 
creased in the favor of God. 

And Jesus loved him. He who came to live 
our life, beginning it in pain and poverty on a 
chill night, cradled in a manger, so that He 
might know by personal experience how hard 
a life it is to live aright, loved John in the 
midst of his faults. Jesus did not wait till 
John became a saint. A sinner, like the rest 
of us, weak in temptation as we are, daily 
missing his ideal as we do, a man with a heart 



THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED. 229 

and a will like ours, was the disciple whom 
Jesus loved. Every striving soul, weighed 
down under a burden of transgression but 
struggling to get free, far from God yet trying 
to draw near, sinning but with bitterness re- 
penting, is loved of God as he was. 



THE SATISFACTION OF RELIGION. 

Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him 
shall never thirst. — John 4 : 14. 

It is a promise of complete satisfaction. It 
is also a statement of the essential purpose of 
the Christian religion, and explains why we 
build churches, and consecrate them in the 
name of God to the service of man. The 
church is meant to be a fountain of water on a 
dusty road, in a thirsty land. It is for the 
sake of the greater happiness of the neighbor- 
hood. 

The promise appeals to all of us, and offers 
that which all of us desire. Some of the first 
explorers of this continent were seeking for a 
well of life out of which they might drink and 
thereafter be young forever and live in sweet 
content. They never found it, but they never 
ceased their search till death stopped them; 
and then they passed the quest to us. Is it not 
the object of our deep desire ? Is it not the 
goal of our best hope ? We would be happy : 
is not that the essential formula of all ambi- 
tion ? 

Some, it is true, are looking for the well of 

230 



THE SATISFACTION OF EELIGIOIS^. 231 

joy in most unlikely places, along sandy 
beaches, where there are no trees^, and where 
the water, if they found any, would not be 
pleasant to the taste. They are disregarding 
all the guide-posts, and defying the moral com- 
pass and despising all experience. One would 
think, for example, that by this time it had 
been made sufficiently plain that the path of 
appetite leads to the pit of destruction, and 
not to happiness. It has been tried often 
enough. Nobody ever got to happiness that 
way. The condition of that road and what 
there is at the end of it, are advertised in the 
papers every day in the week. Nothing else is 
given quite such prominence. There it is 
every day in big black capitals: Appetite 
Avenue, This Way to the Slough of Despond 
mid the Great Bad, And yet there is a con- 
tinual procession of seekers after happiness 
going through that gate. 

Nevertheless, whatever be the road, we are 
all in search of happiness. We may be as ig- 
norant of moral geography, as the crusaders 
were unacquainted with the map of Europe. 
The crusaders thought that every strange, 
large town must be Jerusalem. They looked 
expectantly for the dome of the temple across 
the fields of Germany. They hoped to see the 
hill of Zion from the Bavarian Alps. That 



232 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

shows how eager they were to reach the holy 
city. It is a symbol of our common life. We 
are all looking for Jerusalem, the metropolis 
of satisfaction. Instinctively, imperatively, 
following the summons of our human nature, 
we are all trying to be happy. 

Our Lord is here distinguishing between two 
kinds of happiness, the temporary and the 
permanent. One satisfies for a time, the other 
continues throughout all time. "Whosoever 
drinketh of this water shall thirst again : but 
whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall 
give him shall never thirst." 

The natural water of the well is a symbol 
of our material and temporal satisfactions. It 
means the many pleasant things about us, our 
houses with books and pictures in them, the 
tables at which we sit for our daily meals, our 
comforts and conveniences, our work, our in- 
terests, our customary pleasures, our attained 
ambitions. It means the happiness Avhich 
comes from the sense of appreciation and from 
the spirit of service. 

This is good water : it quenches thirst. The 
Master stood beside the well in Samaria, and 
looked down into its cool depths, and seated 
Himself on its stone curb in the shade of the 
trees, and said to the woman with the bucket, 
"Give Me to drink." When He took the 



THE SATISFACTION OF RELIGION. 233 

water of the well as a symbol of the unsatis- 
fying joys, He blessed them by that word. 
He did not, indeed, give them the best place 
in His esteem, but He gave them a good place. 
He said that they were as good as cold water. 
He said that the happiness which comes from 
appreciation of the world and from the service 
of our neighbors, is as refreshing as cold water. 
He knew by His own experience how true a 
satisfaction is to be found among the hills and 
in the fields, in the pages of great books 
wherein the teachers of old time have recorded 
their adventures in the discovery of truth, and 
in the life which they live who are giving their 
best thought and strength to the betterment 
of the community. He had gone along these 
pleasant ways, and He knew that they all lead 
into the gardens of bliss, into the realms of 
pure delight. What He said was that none of 
these common satisfactions satisfies perma- 
nently. 

For example, the people of an academic com- 
munity are absorbingly interested in books. 
They find in the quiet of a library a haven of 
peace and joy. They are enthusiastically en- 
gaged in reading and in writing books. Every- 
body in the street has a book under his arm. 
Some of them feel that the best of life is in a 
book. But this is a form of happiness which is 



234 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

closely dependent on good health, and on a 
fair amount of prosperity. In the hour of 
pain, in the time of trouble, books are unavail- 
ing. It is true that a scholar said, after a 
period of deep distress, " Books have saved my 
reason and my life." They do help. They 
do enable the reader to forget for a mo- 
ment even a very forlorn condition. But 
they do this only for the literary people : and 
not very well, even for them. No, the book 
demands the sun. The night blots out the 
page. A keen disappointment, a fierce pain, 
a visitation of sorrow closes the common doors 
of happiness. The melancholy wind comes 
howling out of the desert, and shut they go, 
all the customary doors into the house of hap- 
piness, while we stand shivering without. 

It is true that there is a kind of consolation 
in work. The wise man leaves himself as little 
time as possible for sad thoughts. He fills his 
mind with other matters. Out he goes from the 
scene of his bereavement, from the associations 
of his sorrow, and plunges into work. There in 
the midst of the importunate demands of new 
interests, he tries to forget. How does he suc- 
ceed ? You who have tried it know. Work 
helps. For most people who are trying to 
escape from grief, it helps more than books. 
It corrects the perspective of our life. It 



THE SATiSFACTIO]^ OF EELIGION. 235 

shows us that our personal distress, which 
looms up bigger than the eternal mountains, 
is but a part of the universal landscape, and 
belongs among the inevitable pains of human 
existence. But work affords no lasting com- 
fort. It is like the opiate which gives the 
sick man an hour of artificial sleep. Up he 
wakes, to find the old pain waiting for him. 

That is the truth about it. Appreciation of 
the world of nature and of letters, and active 
service in the world of men, are blessed re- 
sources while they last, but they are soon ex- 
hausted. We drink of the water of the well, 
and for the moment are refreshed: then we 
thirst again. That is w^hat Jesus said : none 
of these things permanently satisfies. 

But there are satisfied souls. There are 
men and women who are beautifully and 
blessedly and amazingly happy : and whose 
serenity is not disturbed, so far as we can see, 
by any of the ills of life. 

Eemember, for example, the complete and 
uninterrupted satisfaction of the supreme spirit- 
ual Master. What a rich life He lived ! What 
a plenitude of peace and joy was His ! Who 
will say. Yes, but He missed so much, — so 
much that Herod had, and Pilate, in their 
palaces ? He missed nothing. It is true that 
He was poor ; and that He was often unap- 



236 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

predated, misunderstood, and disappointed. 
It is true that He passed through bitter crises 
when He was reviled and rejected : and that 
He died upon the cross. But we make a great 
mistake if we imagine that His was a life of 
sadness, a journey on the Way of Weeping. 
No, He went along the Path of Peace, along 
the sure road to happiness, wherein the way- 
farer sees continually before him the shining 
steeples of the City of Great Joy. Remember 
that day, just before the beginning of the holy 
week — that day whose anniversary, for all we 
know, we may be at this moment keeping — 
when He set out for the last time to go to 
Jerusalem. He walked before along the 
country road, between the fields of early 
spring, and the disciples followed after. And 
as they looked at Him their hearts were filled 
with great astonishment : they were "amazed " : 
so quick was His step, so high His head, so 
jubilant and victorious His manner. He knew 
whither He went, past Gethsemane, — yes, past 
Calvary, — into His true native land. He knew 
that He was achieving the pursuit of happi- 
ness. 

Or take St. Paul : what a life he had ; what 
a hard life and at the same time what a happy 
life. He gave himself to the service of his 
fellow men ; and they stoned him in the 



THE SATISFACTION OF KELIGIOIS". 237 

streets. Even that might easily have been en- 
dured had he been conscious of success. Suc- 
cess softens adversity. A man can stand being 
stoned if he knows that he is accomplishing 
his purpose. Even stoning may be cheerfully 
accepted as a part of the day's work of the 
hero. The recompense of the hero is success. 
But St. Paul had little of the encouragement 
of success. We know now that he was laying 
the strong foundations of the Christianity, 
even of the civilization, of Europe. We know 
that the letters which he wrote are read to- 
day, Sunday by Sunday, in splendid churches 
which are called by his name. But of all this 
he knew nothing. When he wrote the letters 
he was thinking of the people of Corinth or of 
Rome ; never for a moment of any distant 
future fame. And there were many of his 
contemporaries who thought them very ob- 
jectionable letters. When he laid the founda- 
tion stones,, he was quite uncertain whether 
they would stay laid. There were jealous 
brethren following hard after him with picks 
and crowbars, intent on prying them up. Some 
of them they did pry up. St. Paul was much 
better acquainted with failure than he was 
with success. 

And yet he w^as happy, continually and 
abidingly happy. Tou know how they shut 



238 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

him up in prison, — Paul and Silas, — in the 
foulest dungeon of the common jail, and made 
their feet fast in the stocks ; and how he and 
his companion sang there in the night. No 
voice of song had been heard within those 
walls since the day the builders left them. 
But Paul and Silas could not help singing. 
They were happy and they showed it : happy 
in their high mission, happy in the approval of 
heaven, happy in their victory over them- 
selves. 

In spite of all the hard times that St. Paul 
had, he kept his temper and his courage and 
the serenity of his soul. In addition to all his 
other troubles, he was sick : he had to have a 
doctor go with him on his journeys. But the 
sickness made no difference. That, too, he 
conquered. It is plain that he had discovered 
the supreme secret. 

They who in the old time sought the well of 
life imagined that a draught of its water 
would enable them to live forever. But the 
best of life is not its length : it is not the chro- 
nological quantity of it. Better fifty years of 
our ow^n unspeakably interesting age than all 
the dull centuries of Methuselah. What did 
the patriarch do with all his weary years? 
He was born at the beginning of them ; in the 
midst of them he was married and had chil- 



THE SATISFACTION OF RELIGION. 239 

dren; and at the end he died; and all the 
dreary intervening spaces are absolutely blank. 
He has the reputation of having been the old- 
est man that ever lived, — the emptiest of repu- 
tations. The oldest man, and nothing to show 
for it ! Opportunity interminably prolonged, 
and nothing to show for it ! Let us hope that 
the critics may be able to show that the fig- 
ures are mistaken, and that Methuselah did not, 
after all, live so preternaturally long ; for as the 
record stands it is a thing to be ashamed of, — 
to live so long and do so little ! 

jSTot the quantity but the quality of life is 
what we need : not a well whose water shall 
prolong our days, but one whose water shall 
ennoble and enrich them, the well of peace, 
the well of joy, the well in whose depths tra- 
dition says truth dwells, the well of which 
Christ spoke when He said that whoever 
drank of it should thirst no more. St. Paul 
had tasted the water of that well. 

It may be objected that the example of St. 
Paul is somewhat remote from our common 
life. Paul was a saint, and lived a long time 
ago. But this contrast between one's circum- 
stances and one's state of mind is within the 
range of our own observation. It is a con- 
temporary matter, observable to-day on our 
street. Here in our own neighborhood are 



240 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

happy people, persistently and triumphantly 
happy, facing disaster and mastering it and 
themselves. Who of us is not acquainted with 
some tranquil soul, on whom the storms of life 
have fiercely beaten, who has suffered poverty 
or pain or bereavement, and whose nature 
is keenly sensitive to all these ills, and yet 
whose eyes are bright with light celestial? 
These persons verify and illustrate the paradox 
of the apostle who said of himself and his 
friends that they were " sorrowful but alway 
rejoicing." We do not need to go back to the 
saints of the legends and the pictured win- 
dows : here are living saints, repeating in our 
presence the miracle of the heavenly life. 
Here are they who pursuing happiness have 
found it. 

Where have they found it ? How do they 
preserve their courage, their strength, their 
cheerfulness, their faith? In a hard world, 
wherein they are experiencing more than the 
common lot of hardship, how do they man- 
age to be happy ? These persons have found 
the supreme treasure. ITobody, I suppose, will 
question that. Nothing can be better than this 
abiding happiness. Nothing can be finer than 
to be independent of the changes and chances 
of our mortal life. Here men stand on the 
ultimate eminence of human achievement. 



THE SATISFACTIO]^ OF RELIGION. 241 

We look up to these calm heights, and there 
behold these friends and neighbors, in the light 
of God. How did they get there ? The 
answer is that the road by which they climbed 
up out of the mists and storms is the road of 
religion. 

Here are facts which anybody may verify : 
persons on beds of pain, smiling ; persons walk- 
ing in a howling tempest of adversity, pelted 
as they go by poverty, injustice, ingratitude, 
failure of their plans and hopes, and yet pro- 
ceeding with a firm step and a cheerful spirit, 
going bravely on even alone with clear eyes 
and a good courage. And back of it all, ac- 
counting for it all, is the comfort and inspira- 
tion of religion. Ask them, and they will tell 
you. All this they endure and do through 
Christ who strengthens them. The secret of 
it, the heart of it, is religion. They have an 
apprehension of God, a realization of God, a 
consciousness of the presence of God, and in 
consequence of it they are strong and satisfied. 

There are two good reasons why religion 
satisfies : because it enriches life, and because 
it interprets life. 

It enriches life. It opens the way into a 
new kind of joy. He who has " experienced 
religion," as people used to say, he who has 
got hold of this elemental truth, knows 



242 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

what is meant in the Bible by a new heavens 
and a new earth. There they are : shining 
above his head, solid beneath his feet. Thus 
Jesus said that He came that we might have 
life, and that we might have it more abun- 
dantly. That is. He came to widen out the 
circle of appreciation. The effect of religion, 
thus considered, is akin with the effect of all 
progress ; it teaches new truth, awakens new 
aspirations, develops new possibilities, rounds 
out more completely the natural life of man. 

Here, for example, is one who lives beside 
a country road, Avhose interests are bounded, 
west and south and east and north, by the 
fences of his farm. He does not respond to 
the invitations of books, or of art, or of music, 
or even of nature which shines for him and 
sings for him in his narrow acres. How little 
the man gets from the beautiful world in 
which he lives. Help him, then ; teach him ; 
make him hear the birds sing and see the sun ; 
show him how to bring the homely routine of 
his farm into relation with the life of the wide 
world ; put poetry into his soul ; let him read 
a book when he comes in from the field and 
think about it to-morrow as he follows the 
furrow. It is plain that he is more of a man. 
He is better satisfied. He has multiplied his 
resources, and knows better what to do with 



THE SATISFACTION OF RELIGION. 243 

himself when it rains, and is happier than he 
was. 

Even SO, he is an incomplete being. A man 
may have sound sense and an active mind and 
still belong to the defective classes. What 
lack I yet? he says. The answer is the 
awakening of his soul. He has been brought 
into a living consciousness of the beautiful and 
wonderful world about him, now let him be- 
come aware of the beautiful and wonderful 
world above him. Let him hear the inaudible 
and see the invisible. Let him converse with 
God. He is a new man. He is born again : 
that is the only adequate expression of it. He 
enters into a new life. A while ago, if he had 
been deprived of a physical pleasure he would 
have felt that he had been robbed of all he 
had ; and he would have been right about it. 
He was a poor man. They might not have 
said so at the bank ; but that was the fact. 
With all his possessions, he was poor. Now he 
is rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and his 
wealth is of the kind which no thief can steal. 

Religion enriches life : it also interprets 
life. This is its supreme and characteristic 
quality. " Then thought I to understand 
this," the psalm says, "but it was too hard 
for me ; until I went into the house of 
God." Even religion does not explain life; 



244 THE HUMAN NATURE OF THE SAINTS. 

perhaps because we do not know enough to 
receive the explanation. It does not make 
the hard world plain. It does not write the 
answer at the end of the problem. Sorrow 
makes its inevitable entrance into our life, and 
even religion does not tell us why. What 
religion does is to assure us that somehow it 
is right. The supreme revelation which Jesus 
Christ brought with Him into the darkness of 
human perplexity is that God is our loving 
Father. We are as remote from comprehend- 
ing Him as the small child is remote from un- 
derstanding the plans of his parents. But 
there He is ; that is the great thing. There 
out of sight; or rather, here, — here by our 
side, — is the eternal Father-God, caring for 
us, loving us, bringing good out of ill for us, 
somehow in His own wise way working for 
our good. " Great are the troubles of the 
righteous, but the Lord delivereth him out of 
all." Religion fills men with that conviction. 
It makes us sure of God, of His being, of His 
presence and His power, of His divine love 
and care. The world is our Father's house, and 
all that happens to us in it, whether it be good or 
ill, belongs to His wise discipline of our souls. 
Thus we drink of the living water of the 
celestial well, and thirst no more. We enter 
into the blessed satisfaction of religion. 



NOV 4 19041 






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